Jeffrey Lin
Professor Hoffman
Pioneer Research Program: Oral History Method
August 18, 2024
Persistent and Unwavering in the Face of Adversity
Zhiqing’s Self and Collective Enrichment during the Down to the Countryside Movement
China’s modern history followed a grand trend of urbanization. In 1950, only 13 percent of Chinese citizens lived in cities, whereas that number surged above 65 percent in 2023.[1] However, amidst this migration into urban areas, a group of approximately 17 million educated youths voyaged in the opposite direction, accounting for the halt and even decline of the urbanization process when the urban population percentage lowered from 18% in 1968 to 17% in 1971, not recovering until the educated youths returned home after 1978. They were “zhiqing,” also generally referred to as “educated youth,” “rusticated youth,”[2] or “sent-down youth,” who were urban residents who had finished primary, secondary, or post-secondary education during the height of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.[3] Unlike regular graduates, who would enter the labor market in search of employment opportunities, the zhiqing underwent an unprecedented process called the Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement between 1968 and 1980.[4] This policy, otherwise referred to simply as the Down to the Countryside Movement or rustication movement, entailed mass rustication of educated urban youth, dispatching graduates to rural villages and state farms, either near their cities or in distant frontiers and hinterlands of China. It is crucial to note that the term “rustication” in the context of the rustication movement simply denotes a movement from urban to rural settings, and it is not meant to degrade or reduce the countryside to a more simplistic, backwards, or undeveloped counterpart of urban areas, a commonly conveyed connotation of the term “rustic.”
Many individuals of prominence in China today possess zhiqing backgrounds. The Chairman of the nation, Xi Jinping, as well as the former premier, Li Keqiang, were both rusticated youths, in addition to acclaimed authors such as Ye Xin and Tiesheng Shi. These people, amongst many other intellectuals, entrepreneurs, doctors, teachers, professors, businessmen, and laborers who carry the identity of zhiqing, have impressed upon modern Chinese society an everlasting impact.[5] Rustication is a common experience that definitively changed the life courses of these people who subsequently changed China as a nation. To say that zhiqing had a significant influence on Chinese society understates their impact: they laid the groundwork for revolutionizing rural life by increasing rural literacy rates,[6] cultivating massive new territories, and inspiring later rural reforms, and many others then played instrumental roles in China’s corporations and government, conducting international business, engaging in technological and social innovation, occupying prominent government positions, and deliberating policy.[7] However, members of the zhiqing group recall rustication through contrasting manners: many of these individuals have reflected on their time in the countryside with nostalgia and reminiscence, whereas others refrain from discussing their experiences due to trauma and/or the political sensitivity of the movement in Chinese society.[8] As the zhiqing recede from the stage of history, eroded by the passage of time, it becomes more critical than ever to once again comprehensively capture their authentic, genuine experiences during this aberrant movement of youth “down to the countryside.”
A common perception in historical literature regarding the zhiqing is that they were a “ruined” or even “lost” generation.[9] Indeed, the zhiqing generation’s experiences in the countryside exposed them to all the harshness society and the natural world has to offer: long-term separation from their families, intense physical labor, harsh living conditions, diseases, food insufficiency, and for some, even death.[10] Academic and anecdotal literature regarding the Down to the Countryside Movement often emphasize the zhiqing as a victim of suffering under the imposition of these inhumane conditions.[11] While rustication certainly inflicted suffering and agony upon the educated youths, as state policies forced them into economically precarious, physically unhealthy, and often emotionally devastating circumstances, positivity and the dedication to attaining personal and communal betterment were also pervasive. Through adaptability, perseverance, personal strength, and hope, many rusticated youths fought arduously to improve their quality of life and even that of others.[12] Stories of optimism, struggle, and self and collective enrichment need not be excluded in academic examinations of the sent-down youths’ experiences. Such exclusion would not only erase an integral facet of this group’s experiences and identity but also neglect their ardent efforts to ameliorate their living conditions and those of others, no matter how adverse the circumstances and policies. The individual cases presented by interviews conducted for this study concludes that actively engaging in struggles to the end of happiness and upwards mobility enhances the durability, resilience, personal strength, and mental wellbeing of the zhiqing, allowing them to remember their rustication more positively and fondly due to their willingness and agency in engendering the changes they made.
This study of zhiqing experience in the countryside will commence by describing the methodology by which oral history interviews were conducted and how this paper analyzes the interview content. Then, this paper establishes the context under which mass rustication occurred during the Cultural Revolution. Finally, this paper explores the narrators’ attitudes of positivity, effective integration into the local peasantry, and their efforts to better their own lives as well as those of their community in this context of the Down to the Countryside Movement.
Oral History Interviews: Methodological Introduction
Personal interviews were conducted with three zhiqing: Wen Jixiu, Ding Ancai, and Jia Wanqun, all of whom were connected through their work at the 44th Research Institute in Yongchuan, Chongqing, where early Chinese research on semiconductors was conducted. Wen and Ding are married to each other, while Jia is their family friend. The narrators’ employment at the 44th Research Institute implies that they were intellectuals who were able to receive decent collegiate education during the Cultural Revolution, a time when universities admitted students through recommendation by local cadres. Wen was recommended to Sichuan University by the cadres in her commune, Ding to Tsinghua University, and Jia to the South China University of Technology, but because of Jia’s incomplete high school education at an agricultural technical high school, about which she laments—“I did not study well nor gained acceptance into the Town Middle School, so I attended the Agricultural Middle School”–she first held an apprenticeship at the 44th Research Institute to study liberal arts and sciences prior to attending university.[13] Thus, when conducting analyses of their experiences in their countryside and their perception of the Down to the Countryside Movement, one must remain aware of the fact that they were beneficiaries of the state-imposed system, at least in the dimension of receiving a collegiate education. All narrators have retired by now, but Wen and Jia still frequently organize cultural performances and entertainment events in their local community in Shenzhen, a heritage testifying to their passions in their work in the propaganda team during rustication.
The Down to the Countryside Movement included various types of rustication. Some rusticated far away from their urban homes to frontiers of the country, joined military corps, received a salary, and were officially “enlisted” for constructing settlements and cultivate land at the frontiers. Some labored on state farms, which also provided a salary and was considered employment. Most, however, rusticated to villages in China’s hinterland where they joined production teams and had to perform agricultural labor alongside the villagers to receive work points which can then be translated to food and other resources.[14] Though both types of rustication involved countless challenges, the experiences entailed by both are different. In the former type, youth often dealt with backbreaking construction work, diseases, and harsh climate, while those of the latter labored in fields and struggled to obtain food, as in production teams one needed to earn “work points in order to trade for food” unlike in the army corps.[15] The three narrators were all assigned to production teams in villages in Sichuan or Chongqing, which were in Southwestern China, one of the most common rustication destinations as there were apparent labor shortages there. Thus, the scope of experiences this paper explores is that of the youth who entered production teams in China’s hinterland villages. Wen and Ding both originated from the city of Chongqing, with Wen born in and having spent her youth in the Shapingba area of the city, while Ding grew up in Nan’an (Southern Bank of Yangtze) district.[16] It is noteworthy that both Wen and Ding rusticated via the toukao policy to villages in Northeastern Chongqing and Sichuan, respectively, whereby if youths had family or houses in the countryside, they may return to their relatives and live with them, despite still performing agricultural work.[17] Toukao arguably resolves many difficulties with which rusticated youths typically contended, such as poor living conditions and the need to cook for oneself and do laundry each day. Ding discusses his privilege relative to the chadui youth, which arguably contributed to his ability to “go the extra mile” and embark on projects beneficial to his community in addition to sustaining himself:
I was way better off than the chadui youth, who had to live in houses built by the production team.[18] I did not have many of the concerns of residential life…I did not even have to cook because I was with my grandfather and uncle, the latter of whom was unmarried. Whatever they cooked, I ate. I also did not do laundry as my grandmother did it. For most zhiqing, they would have to complete that task…Making food, fetching water, lighting fires [and such] were all the work of one’s own, which made their lives much more laborious than mine.[19]
Jia grew up in a “town in Chongqing which is now called Yongchuan district: Sulai town of Yongchuan city,” where the 44th Research Institute was located and which would be incorporated into Chongqing in 1983.[20] Jia did not rusticate via toukao but rather chadui, which denotes “inserted into [production] teams,” like most other rusticated youths. All narrators met through working at the 44th Research Institute, after which they migrated to Shenzhen, Guangdong to pursue favorable economic opportunities after Reform and Opening Up of the 1980s.
Personal interviews will constitute the centerpiece of analysis in this paper, which focuses on personal experiences during the rustication movement, as interviews provide some of the most comprehensive and insightful content into the nature and process of one’s struggles.
Rustication in a Time of Pandemonium: The Greater Context of the Cultural Revolution and the Red Guard Movement
After Mao Zedong rolled out China’s First Five-Year Plan in 1953, a strong rural elementary education scheme and favorable food rationing policies in the cities induced urbanization,[21] quickly augmenting pressure on urban centers, as their population sizes soared despite employment opportunities not undergoing significant expansion. The central government revised policies throughout the 1950s to reduce urban stress by reversing the urbanization process through rustication. In December 1955, Mao Zedong encouraged rustication of youths by declaring that “The countryside is a vast universe where there is plenty to be done.”[22]
In the early 1960s, the Great Leap Forward—when deficient food production caused a famine—prompted further rustication. The rustication policy was redesigned to be a more regimented process centering around state farms and production teams rather than national frontiers to redress urban pressures.[23] At first, the scale of rustication was minute and based on volunteering. However, as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, or the Cultural Revolution, which lasted from 1966 to 1976, provided a platform for urban educated youths to engage in protests and riots—sometimes violent—against Mao Zedong and Lin Biao’s[24] “evil,” “capitalist,” and “revisionist” opponents such as Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi, the turmoil and violence students engendered as “Red Guards” and “Red Guard Groups/Organizations” proved a national security concern for Mao Zedong.[25] Red Guards acted as paramilitary organizations promoting violence and sabotage against any force deemed not “socialist” by Mao Zedong. Red Guard Revolutionaries attacked anything or anyone they deemed to be related to the “Four Olds”—old ideas, old habits, old culture, and old customs—thus intensifying class struggle between the poor proletarian worker and peasant classes and the richer, bourgeois classes.[26] Jia critically reflects her involvement as a Red Guard: “We destroyed some books and artifacts. We would go parade [capitalist officials who stood against ‘Revolutionary Values’ of the Cultural Revolution] in the street and insult them. In reflection, [our actions] were inadequate.”[27] Though she recognizes the inadequacy of her actions now, her mindset during the Cultural Revolution quintessentially reflected the anticapitalist, antirevisionist ideology of a typical Red Guard Revolutionary. However, the devolution of the movement led to her withdrawal from it, as violence quickly ensued across cities, especially on secondary school and university campuses, where many school officials, teachers, principals, and professors were persecuted, resulting in widespread aggression and deaths. Wen describes how violence evolved, as “initially it was only verbal debates, [which was] normal at first, but later it gradually developed to intensify. After intensification came the fighting, after fighting came gun violence.”[28] Appalled by the violence and disappointed by the devolution of the Red Guard Movement, which formerly consisted of peaceful demonstrations, Wen commented on her abstention from violence, sabotage, and rapine:
But after this process [of revolution] evolved so much—afterwards you have so much violence and rapine—and [we] discovered that the movement deviated, lost its track…we stayed on the side, [and] did not enter the violence. Their (violent revolutionaries) actions were radical, possibly deviating from the track of the revolution, turning protecting [Mao Zedong and the proletariat] into gunfights, but I abstained from intervening…Some even [exploited the situation to] do bad, evil things.[29]
“Gun fights” described by Wen illustrates an unprecedented degree of social armament in the history of the People’s Republic of China. Much of this violence originated from factional divisions of Red Guards due to ideological disagreements, sparking inter-factional conflicts like those between the 815 faction and the opposition faction in Chongqing, which Ding recalls:
In the end, it [came down to] guns, cannons, and plane shooting. The cannons would fire onto the rocks and houses [on the shores]. They came and penetrated the rocks, blistering with sparks of fire, and those that launched into the water sent plummets of water [into the sky]. And I was in my own home, adjacent to the river…The opposition was on the road attacking the factory below on the other side…The bullets often passed by and through our house and rooms. When we hear a loud sound of wind like “shoo!,” we [would] know that the bullets came.[30]
For Ding, this violence was a profound and personal memory which he recalls with much detail, highlighted by his unusual use of the onomatopoeia “shoo” and the exceptional level of visual detail connoted by words including “blister,” “spark,” and “plummets.” Violent conflicts manifested national security concerns for Mao Zedong. During the later parts of the Red Guard Movement, Mao Zedong and Lin Biao no longer viewed the Red Guards as useful because their political opponents within the party had already been destroyed, by which time the violence and pandemonium caused by these fervent youths had metamorphosed into a liability.[31] Mao thus declared that “the knowledgeable youth must go to the country, and will be educated from living in poverty.”[32] Mao’s advocacy stimulated many impassioned Red Guards to rusticate and contribute to the construction of a socialist countryside, while also cultivating their communist ideals through proximity to and camaraderie with the peasants. Many Red Guards rusticated willingly due to the popular fellowship of Mao’s cult of personality: they believed that everything he said was correct and weighed more than all else. It was common practice for revolutionaries to write on newspapers and pamphlets messages like “Mao gave us infinite strength…support us” and that “the parents are not as dear as Chairman Mao.”[33] Following the closure of schools and universities in May 1966 and the suspension of university entrance tests, youths, who were unable to procure employment, found rustication their only viable future.[34]
Agential Struggle for Individual and/or Communal Betterment: Positivity and Optimism
Scholarship emphasizing detrimental effects of zhiqing life on later life course facilitate unjust omissions of narratives of many zhiqing’s strong individual action, or agency, in attempting to use their resources, intelligence, and creativity to ameliorate their lives or those of others in the countryside. As most zhiqing were able to overcome the challenge of survival and feeding oneself, many strived to actively capitalize on one’s own agency and motivation to attain a happier, more respectable life amidst the adversity of the rural environment. This sense of agency helps a zhiqing perceive their memory of rustication with greater fondness and relief as it provides them with a sense of empowerment—that their years were spent doing what they wanted to do, not wasted simply trying to survive or live up to others’ expectations.
Attitude towards Hardship: Optimism or Pessimism?
Scar literature writers like Jung Chang and oral history narrators such as those of Feng Jicai portray the zhiqing as a helpless, disempowered figure who lacks agency in determining what is to be done about their lives, and they rightfully do so as these are their authentic personal experiences. This disempowerment commences with one’s parting from one’s family, severing a youth from what provides them nourishment and power. A diary by Liu Ping, an educated youth rusticating to Guangxi, notes “each parting will last for one or two years.”[35] Feng’s interviewee, in “Trapped in the Great Northern Wilderness,” describes how, when educated youths depart,
“Noises of wailing and crying filled the railway station…educated youths reached out from the windows to hold tightly onto the hands of their family members. Even when the train started moving, they wouldn’t let go…like they were going to part forever!”[36]
This sense of helplessness and desperation of leaving one’s family profoundly disempowers and disorients these youths, who were not yet independent from their families. This powerlessness places zhiqing in a passive position, as they had to quickly confront novel challenges they can only overcome through experiencing the difficulty entailed acquiring this skill.
However, many other zhiqing approached the call to rustication with a contrasting mindset. Considering how secondary schools were suspended and there were few activities or opportunities for employment for youth, many voluntarily signed up for rustication to “train” themselves for future jobs and to add practical work experience to their resumes. Wen was among those who saw rustication as a superior alternative to idling at home:
After Chairman Mao dictated that the educated youths had to go ‘up the mountains and down to the countryside’ and receive the education from the rural peasants, I felt that it was necessary for us to go…We negotiated within the family…I eagerly signed up.[37]
Wen’s “eagerness” to rusticate contrasts with scar literature’s portrayal of departure to the countryside as a process of desperation and helplessness. Rather, she recalls that the decision was a result of her strong desire and agency to make meaningful changes in her life. For some educated youths, like Ding Ancai, whose home was caught in a ceasefire between two factions of Red Guards, rustication served practical benefits as well:
[The countryside] was safe; there were no factional fights there. I also learned to do agricultural work, which was [better] than my personal experiences of horror when a granade was thrown over our house, and gunfire incessantly responded in [sounds of] “Biu! Biu! Biu!.” As soon as the light of of the second day broke, and the crossfire had ceased, my father expediently signed us up and sent us back to our old rural home.[38]
For Ding, rustication presented a “fresh start” and an opportunity to avoid the violence that traumatized his family, highlighted by his unusual use of onomatopoeias, such as when describing how the “gunfire incessantly responded in [sounds of] ‘Biu! Biu! Biu!.’” For Ding, rustication was comparatively superior to living under the horrors of urban violence, encouraging him to regard rustication and the opportunities presented to him in the countryside positively.
For those who perceived the rustication movement as adverse and disempowering for the youths, residential life and agricultural labor proved overwhelming, particularly for those who struggled to survive and feed oneself. Jung Chang illustrates how she had to live in shacks next to pigsties which were inundated during flood seasons, necessitating her to tread through mud water in order to get to sleep.[39] A day in the fields would often be “back-breaking” for the unaccustomed zhiqing, conveying her sense of disempowerment and inability to change her plight.[40] When attending to her assignments in both Ningnan and Deyang, Chang complained that “everything at Ningnan was done manually, the way it had been for at least 2,000 years…no machineries…no draft animals,” and “everything [in Deyang], including the transport of water, manure, fuel, vegetables, and grain, was done entirely by hand, and shoulders.”[41] Not only was agricultural work labor-intensive, but fetching basic supplies like water also broke backs. In Ningnan, Jung Chang had to climb for half an hour up to a water well, as her “arms became unbearably sore.” She concluded that “it was an exhausting battle for every meal.”[42] If survival was so difficult, it comes without surprise that happiness and human flourishing are out of reach.
Contrastingly, Wen, Jia, and Ding, despite also undergoing similar challenges of adapting to harsh living conditions, physical labor, and intensive labor, perceived these adversities and challenges in an “optimistic,” “positively-oriented” manner. Wen exemplifies the immense potential of a “positively-oriented” mindset by showing that she can employ her agency to innovate and organize a Cultural Advertisement Team (“Propaganda” Team, not as in spreading misinformation) to entertain and inform youths and peasants of news and happenings. She still acknowledges the physical and mental pains of agricultural labor—specifically, farming rice:
Because I did not know how to grip [the hoe], I [thought I] had to hold it tight! And bam! As [the hoe] lands the blood blisters form. And my mother [on the first day of my rustication] was standing on the side of the field on the slopes [of a mountain], and she saw that I was crying, and so she cried as well.[43]
This pain was undeniably profound for Wen, as she passionately illustrates the damaging effect of the hoe on her hand through animating the experience with the onomatopoeia “bam!” As she narrates how blood blisters formed on her skin, Wen clasps her hands, seemingly struck by the painful memory. But instead of portraying agricultural labor in a manner of complaint, she frames it as a learning opportunity as she criticizes her own “squeamish,” “pampered, spoiled lifestyle” before rustication that made her unprepared for such intense agricultural labor.[44] Jia Wanqun shared her similar experience that “after a few days of handling with the hoe, my hands were covered with blood blisters.”[45] But for Wen, her body was also unaccustomed to the climate in her village, and she describes her endless, “agonizing” irritation and itches:
You can’t really see anything biting you [in bed, or in the fields], but your body itches agonizingly every day! Even my heart felt itchy. It was unspeakable. I did not know where [the itch] came from…You can punch [your skin] and there was nothing. [I]t was just the land and waters [to which I was unaccustomed]. And from day until night, I had scratched myself for at least more than half a year…During the day I would scratch on, and at night I could not sleep tight. But I continue to rise to do the agricultural labor. Because it was my job, and I had to do it…[then], layer of scabs [covered] my skin. When the scabs turned itchy, I would scratch it again, and all over again I would get a new scab. [Later], I let the itchiness be…I ignored it and it wasn’t so [bad].[46]
While Jung Chang has suffered the exact same conditions in her story—unbearably intense agricultural work and endless itches on the skin—Wen recalls her story in an entirely different manner. After exclaiming about how harsh country life is, Wen always concludes how rustication was a refreshing, educating experience that allowed her to perceive the difficulty of being a rural peasant and that “Mao’s policy was correct.” Wen recalls that, through her unwavering belief in the correctness in Mao Zedong’s directive—“I think Chairman Mao’s path was correct. For me”—and the efficacy of receiving a rural reeducation by the peasants, the “reeducation eliminated all my squeamishness and pampered, spoiled lifestyle.”[47] Her attitude of “continu[ing] to rise to do the agricultural labor; because it was my job” attests to her commitment to the rustication program despite facing backbreaking agricultural labor and harsh rural residential life. Jia expressed a similar sentiment of “admiration of Chairman Mao, [as] we thought that it was within reason that we educated youths should undergo the training of the countryside, to receive the ‘reeducation’ [by peasants]…[and] advance our thought.”[48] These zhiqing’s laudatory perception of Mao’s decisionsuggest that they regard the opportunity and later the memory of rustication with optimism and fondness rather than detestation.
Connecting with the Peasantry: the “Ideal Type” of Rusticated Youths
In the words of Jia, rustication and receiving the training and reeducation by the peasants was “better than sitting at home chatting about nothing.”[49] Jia shares Wen’s urge to contribute to rural development and give back to the rural peasants who have provided the zhiqing with “reeducation,” because she underwent a “panoramic” transformation of thought and philosophy after witnessing and experiencing the hardship of being a peasant in the countryside:
I felt the challenges of being a rural peasant profoundly. When we were young, we did not know to appreciate. We only knew that it was painful to be a rural peasant, because they were poor and wore shabby clothes. As youngsters we thought rural peasants were one class below [ourselves]. That was an untenable belief. But after undergoing the challenges of rural life, this disdain changed into a sympathy. We stood in solidarity with them in the face of challenges like famine. We felt that life was hard for these village[r]s. This was a profound experience…We have established mutual feelings with the peasants…Afterwards, when our feelings for each other became more engrained and deep, they were reluctant to let us go when we were recommended for work in cities…They would shed tears anterior to our departures.[50]
Jia’s savoring of her profound, amicable camaraderie with the rural peasants reflects her willingness to actively engage with, rather than living parasitically off, the rural peasants, even though the latter reflected the hostile view peasants held when Jia’s company of zhiqing initially arrived. According to Jia and Wen, the rural peasants change of attitude from initially repellent to eventually warm and welcoming facilitated their integration with the local peasants and nurtured their drive to contribute to the local rural community, forming a mutual relationship between the zhiqing and rural peasant. Jia recounts that
We [zhiqing] would save some of our [food rationing] tickets for the poorest of peasants. We really felt a pity for them, and as one with positive attitudes, it was hard to reconcile with the suffering of the peasants. We had a strong sense of community by eating rice all from “big pots,” around which people cluster for meals…We also socialized and integrated well with the local commoners. They treated us very nicely and fairly, so our friendship was strong. Often, the villagers would invite us to have meals with them, and they would also give free food and vegetables to us zhiqing.[51]
This change of attitude in part occurred due to the zhiqing’s ability to acclimate to rural conditions and labor, helping increase agricultural productivity. A mutual relationship replaces the parasitic one which the rural peasants believed previously existed between them and the zhiqing, and zhiqing would often be invited to community events. Wen savors her memory where
there was an old tradition of slaughtering pigs before the new year. This tradition was fun as the zhiqing were invited to the slaughtering every year, and we would stew some of their organs like livers, kidneys, and even their brains sometimes with peppers grown native in Chongqing, which was a great delicacy: the saltiness of the stew mixed with an almost herbal fragrance of freshly harvested red peppers…When the villagers would start a massive fire and cook on it, I often would put yams on top of their food, piggybacking off their cooking.[52]
The vividness of the cooking scene and substantive detail, such as olfactory descriptions of “almost herbal fragrance” of Wen’s description of community new year dinners, reflect her reminiscence and fondness of this memory. The welcoming treatment peasants showered on the zhiqing in these Sichuan villages nurtured the zhiqing’s self-perceived moral urge to reciprocate.
Pathways to Individual Action: Ameliorate Life for Self or Community?
Bearing a common attitude of “giving back” for the reeducation by the peasants and desire to advance the countryside in mind, Wen thought “how do I effectuate a small contribution? Having had them teach us [the ways of life], we wanted them to learn from us as well.”[53] Wen believed that it was within her abilities to
tell stories about the interesting things in the cities unbeknownst to the [villagers]. [I would share how] “modern,” “advanced” [technologies] of the cities worked. I [taught girls] aesthetics, with respect to how to dress oneself, how to decorate oneself; and for those who liked to sing and dance, I taught them as well. Initially, I [did so] on a small scale. Later, I thought, no! This small scale did not have much effect. So I wanted to start an advertisement/propaganda team.[54]
This propaganda team, created from the personal agency, creativity, and desire for positive change of Wen Jixiu and her zhiqing companions, became not only a means of entertainment providing cultural performances for festivals, but also an important carrier for information:
Sometimes, when policies, directives, and announcements are passed down to the county government, we had to learn the content of those official files and speak about the newest directives and dictations of the Communist Party to the public in squares. To make the programming less boring and more entertaining, we compile showcases, such as allegro, dialogue, cross talk, sketch, dance, songs, and even model plays.[55]
Presenting political content through these artistic formats was a bold innovation, pioneered by rusticated youths in Wen’s village during this period of tumultuous political struggle and authoritarian rule by the Communist Party. However, Wen desired to find ways to both make rural life less dreary for the zhiqing and peasants while serving important functions of disseminating government information and propaganda, which pleased both the local government cadres and wider populace. Wen reflects how this is a challenging task, one that tolled both on the body and mind, but nevertheless one which the team was passionate doing.
[We] help conduct night [political] study sessions…Usually people are supposed to arrive at 7 p.m. [for these sessions], but the crowd does not gather fully until 10, even 11 p.m., and we even continue our sessions until 2 a.m., at which time we are still reading and interpreting the newspaper to the village crowds in the county.[56]
Running a propaganda team was no easy task, as the youths in the propaganda team worked late hours and encountered many more challenges, such as when
At midnight, we have to pass “grave mountains,” populated by unorganized graves on its ridges [where rural villagers buried their dead when there were no organized graveyards]. Before, I could not even walk past these kinds of places during daytime, but now I have to make the trek after midnight, [often] at 2 or 3 in the morning.[57]
But instead of perceiving these difficulties as occasions of suffering and trauma, Wen concludes joyfully that propaganda team tasks were what she and her friends actively desired to do and that these hardships were what made the process “enjoyable,” fun, and fruitful:
Overcoming these challenges helped me significantly in the workplace and life by showing me that there is nothing is too hard to overcome. You’d end up overcoming all perceived hardships by simply pushing through. Yes, simply pushing through.[58]
Studies conducted by scholars such as Zhou, Hou, Chen, and Cheng reflect quantitatively and qualitatively that zhiqing present greater qualities of resilience, durability, and persistence in the workplace in comparison to those who have not rusticated.[59] Wen perfectly demonstrates how she employed her overcoming of challenges as a rusticated youth to her advantage to become a more productive, optimistic, and in her words, “positively-oriented” person. Ding Ancai produces a similar reflection that zhiqing’s experiences of overcoming challenges in the countryside could be used to improve one’s later work ethic and life quality:
zhiqing had an abnormally strong quality for bearing hardships and standing hard work, especially in comparison to those who did not rusticate. The zhiqing had to contend with the harsh life and heavy agricultural labor asked of us in the countryside…So the zhiqing would say when working: ‘however hard this is, it could not have been as difficult as it was then [during the Down to the Countryside Movement].’ We had the philosophy of being able to bear through hardships and work hard ingrained in us, and we would apply it to our work, making us better and more efficient.[60]
Ding was also one who did not succumb to the difficulty of life in the countryside and instead employed his agency to do beneficial work for the commune he inhabited. This was partly due to his ability to rusticate to his own rural home through the toukao policy, where his relatives provided him accommodation, thus making life less harsh and difficult for Ding. But Ding’s innate “positively-oriented and optimistic” outlook for life and hope to lead better paths endowed him the desire to employ his agency to engender change as well, which is especially remarkable considering the trauma afflicted upon him and his family by the Cultural Revolution, such as the gun fights that impacted his home as bullets went by and over his house. After school was suspended during the Red Guard Movement, Ding spent his free time playing “small gadget games, develop[ing] photos…, installing radios with minerals, [and] listening to radio shows. We would go out to the market to purchase radios and transistors to build.”[61] Ding later employed his strong interests in “science and technology” that he developed during the Red Guard Movement to the constructive ends of helping build his commune’s telecommunications system during his time as a zhiqing, a memorable, enjoyable experience that he cherishes:
My most memorable experience was helping build a telecommunication and broadcast system for my production team, dadui, and commune. In the older days, communication between the commune [leadership] and dadui [leadership] was choppy, requiring people to run between [their headquaters]. Now, [after I helped built the system], you can call the commune leadership straight from the dadui. This greatly facilitated information transmission, as calling became very convenient. The broadcasting system, on the other hand, was designed to inform the peasants of ongoing events, policies, etc. I am pleased that I helped set up this broadcasting system so that everyone can hear the news fresh.[62]
So despite having felt an eagerness to leave the countryside, Ding retains a positive memory of his time in the countryside as he reflected that he “did something I wanted to do” and made positive change through his own agency.[63] His agency and ability to struggle for and effectuate positive change beyond simply trying to survive was facilitated by superior conditions provided by the toukao policy, as he rusticated to his own rural home. Nevertheless, unlike many of his companions, who, according to him, skipped work and engaged in theft, he did not sit around idle but used his energy and abilities to go beyond what was asked of him and make beneficial change—“building a telecommunication and broadcasting system”—for his village.[64]
Jia, Ding, and Wen all subsequently capitalized on the positive mental and physical effects of rural reeducation to achieve upwards mobility through government-sponsored educational opportunities. All three were later recommended to attend prestigious universities, which rewarded these youths for the beneficial effects they have impressed on the countryside. Although their rustication experience was full of obstacles, they reflect on it with fondness and joy in their tones. Despite them having different opinions and disagreements about the policy direction of the Cultural Revolution, especially the Red Guard Movement preceding rustication, they all believe rustication was a worthwhile experience that transformed their perception of life as well as work ethic, facilitating their later success. Be it creating a propaganda team for the entertainment of other zhiqing and the rural peasants or building a local telecommunications system, these youths were grateful and contributed to their rural societies, which in turn propelled them further in life, demonstrating these youths’ achievement of upwards mobility in a time of adverse government policy. This upwards mobility, facilitated by favorable views of these zhiqing by local cadres, reflects the beneficial nature of these youths’ changes for their communities.
Conclusion
The zhiqing, an often-overlooked group of people, underwent a plethora of experiences, treatment, and struggles unfathomable to their former selves, who were urban dwellers often unaware of the pervasive episodes of suffering with which Chinese rural peasants contended. Having experienced the difficulty of rural life, many zhiqing truly treated their rustication as an opportunity to sympathize, bond with, and be “reeducated” by the rural peasants. They sought to improve living circumstances for themselves and for their community, engendering positive effects on the quality rural of life, education, healthcare, and more. Ding concludes eloquently on the impact the zhiqing brought about not only in the countryside but beyond:
The zhiqing worked exceptionally hard: more than those who have not rusticated. This is because they suffered hardship and underwent challenges in the countryside. They know the pain and suffering of rural peasants. So, when they worked in the cities, they appreciated their job much more and worked harder. I think they were a main propelling, driving workforce in the Reform and Opening Up of the 80s and 90s, a backbone of economic development…The zhiqing had a positive effect on this country.[65]
For the zhiqing, “however hard [anything] is, it could not have been as difficult as it was then.”
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[1] C.Textor, “Degree of urbanization in China in selected years from 1980 to 2023,” Statista, last modified January 17, 2024, accessed July 30, 2024, https://www.statista.com/statistics/270162/urbanization-in-china/; Karen C. Seto, “What Should We Understand about Urbanization in China?,” Yale Insights, November 1, 2013, accessed July 30, 2024, https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/what-should-we-understand-about-urbanization-in-china.
[2] The term “rusticated youth” or “rustication movement” was another common method, employed by academic scholarship regarding the Down to the Countryside Movement, as a shorthand expression for zhiqing and the Down to the Countryside Movement, respectively. It is useful to note that the term “rustication” in the context of the rustication movement simply denotes a movement from urban to rural settings, and it is not meant to degrade or reduce the countryside to a more simplistic, backwards, or undeveloped counterpart of urban areas, a commonly conveyed connotation of the term “rustic.”
[3] Helena K. Rene, China’s Sent-Down Generation: Public Administration and the Legacies of Mao’s Rustication Program (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2013), 76-80.
[4] Weiyi Wu and Hong Fan, “The Rise And Fall Of The ‘Up To The Mountains And Down To The Countryside’ Movement: A Historical Review,” Rozenberg Quarterly, 2013, accessed January 12, 2024, https://rozenbergquarterly.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-up-to-the-mountains-and-down-to-the-countryside-movement-a-historical-review/. The Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement will be referred to as the Down to the Countryside Movement for the sake of concision.
[5] Chouwen Song, “上山下乡：解析中国的知青运动与农业经济” [Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside: Analyzing China’s Zhiqing Movement and Agricultural Economy], Baidubaijiahao, last modified November 11, 2023, accessed January 12, 2024, https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1781997892966084332&wfr=spider&for=pc.
[6] Yi Chen et al., “Arrival of Young Talent: The Send-Down Movement and Rural Education in China,” American Economic Review 110, no. 11 (2020): 3397, accessed December 28, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20191414.
[7] Bei and Li, 七十年代 [Seventies], 11.
[8] Guobin Yang, “China’s Zhiqing Generation: Nostalgia, Identity, and Cultural Resistance in the 1990s,” Modern China 29, no. 3 (2003): 267, accessed January 3, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1177/0097700403029003001.
[9] Yihong Pan, Tempered in the Revolutionary Furnace: China’s Youth in the Rustication Movement (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009), 250.
[10] Weili Ye and Xiaodong Ma, Growing up in the People’s Republic: Conversations between Two Daughters of China’s Revolution (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 25-33.
[11] This perspective, which reduces the zhiqing to a passive character that bears suffering, is much emphasized through scar literature—personal accounts of trauma and suffering during the Cultural Revolution.
[12] Jonathan Unger, “China’s Troubled Down-to-the-Countryside Campaign,” Contemporary China, January 1979, 3, accessed December 26, 2023, https://psc.bellschool.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/IPS/PSC/CCC/publications/papers/JU_Troubled_Campaign.pdf.
[13] Wanqun Jia, interview by the author, One Haifu Residential Complex, Bao’an District, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China, July 5, 2024.
[14] Ancai Ding, interview by the author, One Haifu Residential Complex, Bao’an District, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China, July 5, 2024.
[15] Ding, interviewed by the author.
[16] Chongqing is a directly administered city, just like Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin, which enjoys the status equivalent of a province. Indeed, its size is comparable to many other Chinese provinces. Chongqing holds a territory (31,791 square miles) almost as large as countries like South Korea (38,691 square miles).
[17] Sanjiao Tang, “Urban Youth on the Margins: Inequality in China’s Sent Down Youth Movement,” Asia Pacific Perspectives 18, no. 1 (2023): 4-17, accessed January 1, 2024, https://repository.usfca.edu/asiapacificperspectives/vol18/iss1/1/.
[18] Chadui refers to a form of rustication where the youth is inserted (cha) into production teams (dui) in the countryside.
[19] Ding, interviewed by the author.
[20] Chongqing Municipal Government, “永川地区并入重庆” [Yongchuan Region Annexed into Chongqing], Chongqing Municipal Archive Information Network, last modified April 1, 2007, accessed August 2, 2024, https://jda.cq.gov.cn/dawh/lssdjt/content_6756. Note that Narrator said “district” instead of “town” here but for historical accuracy Yongchuan was an independent city/town in the 1960s.
[21] Wu and Fan, “The Rise.”
[22] Chen et al., “Arrival of Young,” 3397.
[23] Rene, China’s Sent-Down, 76; Wu and Fan, “The Rise.”
[24] During the latter part of the Cultural Revolution, Lin Biao actually became a target and victim of the movement,
[25] Stephen Uhalley and Jin Qiu, “The Lin Biao Incident: More than Twenty Years Later,” Pacific Affairs 66, no. 3 (1993): 386-98, accessed January 11, 2024, https://doi.org/10.2307/2759617.
[26] Pan, Tempered in the Revolutionary, 24-6.
[27] Jia, interview by the author.
[28] Jixiu Wen, interview by the author, One Haifu Residential Complex, Bao’an District, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China, July 5, 2024.
[29] Wen, interview by the author.
[30] Ding, interview by the author.
[31] Rene, China’s Sent-Down, 68-9.
[32] Rene, China’s Sent-Down, 75.
[33] “于无声处听惊雷” [Listening to Thunder from a Silent Location], 共产党宣言 The Communist Manifesto (Kunming, China), April 14, 1967, sec. 4, 1. The Communist Manifesto, in this context, is a periodical newspaper published in the city of Kunming during the Cultural Revolution.
[34] Wu and Fan, “The Rise.”
[35] Ping Liu, “A Diary 知青日记,” September 13, 1963, (DRB)ryp-liu-ping-007-001, Down to the Countryside Movement, Dartmouth University Library, Hanover, NH.
[36] Feng, “Trapped in the Great,” 17.
[37] Wen, interview by the author.
[38] Ding, interview by the author.
[39] Jung Chang, “‘The More Books You Read, the More Stupid You Become’: I Work as a Peasant and a Barefoot Doctor,” in Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, 25th ed. (London, United Kingdom: HarperPress, 2012), 430.
[40] Y. Xia, interview by the author, Shenzhen, China, December 29, 2023.
[41] Chang, “‘Thought Reform,” 432.
[42] Chang, “‘Thought Reform,” 399.
[43] Jixiu Wen, interview by the author, One Haifu Residential Complex, Bao’an District, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China, July 5, 2024.
[44] Wen, interview by the author.
[45] Wanqun Jia, interview by the author, One Haifu Residential Complex, Bao’an District, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China, July 5, 2024.
[46] Wen, interview by the author.
[47] Wen, interview by the author. The term “reeducation” utilized in the context of the Down to the Countryside Movement does not carry a derogatory, condescending, negative connotation frequently associated with the term. Rather, it conveys that the zhiqing were supposed to gain new insights and receive a different, new type of education by peasants in the countryside.
[48] Jia, interview by the author.
[49] Jia, interview by the author.
[50] Jia, interview by the author.
[51] Jia, interview by the author.
[52] Wen, interview by the author.
[53] Wen, interview by the author.
[54] Wen, interview by the author.
[55] Wen, interview by the author.
[56] Wen, interview by the author.
[57] Wen, interview by the author.
[58] Wen, interview by the author.
[59] Kevin Chen and Xiaonong Cheng, “Comment on Zhou & Hou: A Negative Life Event with Positive Consequences?,” American Sociological Review 64, no. 1 (1999): 1-4, accessed January 2, 2024, https://doi.org/10.2307/2657276. Xueguang Zhou and Liren Hou, “Children of the Cultural Revolution: The State and the Life Course in the People’s Republic of China,” American Sociological Review 64, no. 1 (1999): 12-36, accessed January 3, 2024, https://doi.org/10.2307/2657275.
[60] Ancai Ding, interview by the author, One Haifu Residential Complex, Bao’an District, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China, July 5, 2024.
[61] Ding, interview by the author.
[62] Ding, interview by the author.
[63] Ding, interview by the author.
[64] Ding, interview by the author.
[65] Ding, interviewed by the author.