Author: Gabriella Baratier (Lei Ju)

Dear Tongzhimen,

I am saddened that my time to productively serve the Party as a journalist is coming to a close, but I recognize that it is time for the vigorous younger generation to take my place, and I know that they have been trained well. For my last assignment, I am incredibly grateful that I was able to read an advanced manuscript of Liang Heng’s forthcoming memoir. I feel as though the experiences of Liang Heng and his family members throughout the Cultural Revolution serve as an illuminating microcosm of the general national experience of the Cultural Revolution, specifically the way in which familial and personal relationships have been frayed, and sometimes even outright shattered. People’s fears of becoming the next targets of struggle meant that they had to pursue self-preservation over anything and everything else, including their bonds with other people.

There is one passage in particular from the memoir which I find particularly vital when it comes to our understanding of the past several years. A teenage Liang Heng, separated geographically from his mother and his sisters, and isolated socially from his father, began a new semester at school in the countryside. He stumbles upon a boarded up storeroom full of books published before the Cultural Revolution [Liang, 201]. He and his fellow classmates form a secret society of sorts around this discovery: “my fellow thieves and I held discussions on literature and even began to write poetry, meeting on the windy river banks but never feeling cold” [Liang, 202]. This seems to be a moment in which Liang Heng was able to forge a genuine community with others, but it is incredibly short lived. Liang Heng is soon accused of being a May Sixteenth Conspirator, and just like that, his new friends turn on him, as if the bond they’d shared had simply never existed.

Liang writes, “I think what hurt the most was the way my friends betrayed me. Every time Liu came in, he had new ‘evidence’ in his hand, reports tucked into the locked boxes by the people I had trusted most. The people I had defended in fights turned me in, the people with whom I had stolen food. My literary friends told of our book thefts and our poetry meetings; my homeroom teacher wrote about my ‘bad thought’” [Liang, 205].

This passage is heartbreaking, yet it is merely one instance of many within the memoir. Liang Heng’s father divorces his mother after she is labeled a Rightist, in a desperate attempt to preserve the safety and reputation of his children [Liang, 13]. When a critical eye is soon turned upon Liang Heng’s father himself, Liang Heng is ostracized from his school community, and his father is isolated from his former coworkers and colleagues, who he’d spent years working alongside [Liang, 59]. The most heartbreaking fact, however, is that these experiences of ostracization from both family members and friends were far from unique to Liang Heng’s family; I have spoken to many tongzhimen with strikingly similar experiences.

Throughout the many twists and turns of the Cultural Revolution, if people wanted to keep themselves safe, they needed to turn their backs harshly upon those who were criticized as being Capitalist Roaders or Soviet Revisionists or intellectuals or proponents of the Four Olds, even if they were best friends, spouses, or flesh and blood. A former landlord, Li Maoxiu, who went through immense physical torture during the Cultural Revolution, recounted to me his desperate attempts to protect his son, and how painful it was: “in China, fathers and sons traditionally have close ties, but now you had to end your relationship. It was really sad, but you just had to do it. After my son was struggled against for the first time, I claimed that our relationship had been broken off. Awful things would have happened to him if I hadn’t done that” [Williams, 1:17:30].

I also spoke with a woman who had been a student during the Cultural Revolution, and she told me a story which rattled me to my core. She explained, “In my class, there was a student whose grandfather had owned a big fabric store, so he was a capitalist. I heard that everyone was to go to their house to criticize him. I got there late, and by the time I had arrived, the capitalist had been beaten to death” [Williams, 1:21:55]. She went on to say, “students and probably Red Guards from the neighborhood… got involved. All those people beat him to death, including his own granddaughter, my classmate” [Williams, 1:22:35]. These harrowing stories illustrate the fact that the Cultural Revolution turned friend against friend, spouse against spouse, brother against brother, and even parent against child. I find the dissolution of familial and communal bonds to be one of the most important takeaways from the Cultural Revolution, and one of the nation’s core focuses as we move forward must be to restore trust in the institutions of the family and the local community.

I cannot express how thankful I am that I have maintained such a loyal readership throughout these past several decades. I hope that we can now all come together to mend the divisions which have arisen within our great Chinese society, and come back stronger than ever before. Now that the Gang of Four has been arrested, I have faith that we will be able to accomplish this.

Farewell, Lei Ju

Dear Tongzhimen,

All that I have ever wanted was to see the people of the great nation of China thrive. I have dedicated every waking hour for the past several decades–as a young college student who took on this job as a reporter to immerse myself in revolutionary ideas and practice, as a migrant to Yenan, and as a member of a work team in the land reform campaign–to the maintenance of the revolutionary cause. As dedicated as I have always been, I must admit that despite my earnestness, there have been times when I have unwittingly begun to stray towards the Capitalist Road. When I witnessed firsthand some of the hardships that people have faced, including women being subjected to continual patriarchal oppression, middle peasants being mislabeled as landlords and struggled against during land reform, and villagers facing hunger and disease during the three years of natural disasters, my natural impulse was, of course, to look for reasons why things had gone astray. I did this out of a deep love for the people of China. However, I have since realized, after reading my copy of Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong until its pages have become frayed and its margins are filled up with my notes just as Lei Fang does, that some of my reporting may have misattributed fault or blame to certain Party policies themselves. This is the gravest of errors, and I will spend the rest of my life repenting now that I have learned.

The Chinese Communist Party provides the answer to every last one of China’s woes. As Mao writes, “Without the efforts of the Chinese Communist Party, without the Chinese Communists as the mainstay of the Chinese people, China can never achieve independence and liberation, or industrialization and the modernization of her agriculture” [Mao, 10]. The hardships that some people have faced are all in service of the greater good: “Wherever there is struggle there is sacrifice, and death is a common occurrence. But we have the interests of the people and the sufferings of the great majority at heart, and when we die for the people it is a worthy death” [Mao, 82]. During my reporting on land reform, I noticed that some local conditions were not conducive to the Party’s grand narrative of struggle–not all villages had evil, bloodsucking tyrant, large landlords, for instance. I thought this was a weakness, but Mao explains in his writings that the whole of the nation must always be put first, “if the proposal is not feasible for the part but is feasible in the light of the situation as a whole, again the part must give way to the whole. This is what is meant by considering the situation as a whole” [Mao, 110]. I have let myself forget that “a revolution is not a dinner party,” let myself get wrapped up in Soviet Revisionism and the Capitalist Road [Mao, 14]. I am not afraid to acknowledge the mistakes that I have made, and I am dedicated to change. Let us move forth with the great revolution, and Long Live Chairman Mao!

Sincerely, Lei Ju

Dear Tongzhimen,

The Great Leap Forward had incredibly noble goals, and by all national Party accounts, it was able to deliver upon many of those. Land has been collectivized, grain procurement quotas have been on the rise in most rural areas, and our great nation has moved towards industrialization. The Chairman’s goal of surpassing Great Britain’s level of steel production, a concept which was only a distant dream a few short years ago, moved within our grasp. However, whispers of tragedies – ones that are almost too horrible to name – befalling the people of China have also swirled about. I received an assignment to travel to as many different provinces as possible in order to get a clearer picture of the realities that people are facing, in the city and in the countryside alike. Exports and the Party’s grain procurement quotas have risen steadily over the past three years, so I expected to find a countryside of abundance. As I traveled from village to village, collecting testimonies and reading documents, however, I was confronted with stark conditions I found that some areas of our great nation have been plagued by chronic crop failure, violence, corruption, disease, famine, death, and suffering, and my heart breaks for the areas affected by this turmoil [Zhou Xun, 3]. I believe that the Chairman and the Party will lead all members of our society back to prosperity in due time, yet after witnessing local conditions firsthand, I also have some worries that certain consequences of the manner in which the Great Leap was implemented will linger on for years to come.

Family life and the lives of children have been disrupted immensely in the past three years, and I believe that the disruption of the lives of China’s new generation will have a reverberating impact on our nation for many years to come. In January of 1959, a report about conditions in Gaoguanzhai township, Zhangqiu county stated that “many villagers had no choice but to abandon their homes and become beggars. Some had no other option but to sell their children” [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 1, Page 4]. Families have been displaced from their homes, children have been displaced from their parents, and such a destruction of the familial unit will impact China’s demographic and social realities for decades to come.

Due to malnutrition, many women of childbearing age in Gaoguanzhai have stopped menstruating, babies have been born with serious birth defects, and babies have starved to death because their mothers quickly stopped producing milk to breastfeed them with [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 1, Page 6]. Furthermore, surviving babies and children are subjected to heartbreaking neglect. One of the core aims of the Great Leap Forward was to mobilize all members of the community, including women, to work outside of the home on localized agricultural or industrial projects. Mao has previously said that “the youth and women are happy about the new…system,” but the stories I heard from women and children about the disastrous impacts of mobilizing mothers to work without providing any systematic form of childcare paint a drastically different picture [Mao, Talks at Beidaihe, 164]. As a report on relief work in Sichuan Province from 1961 states, “since the Great Leap Forward, many women have been encouraged to go into full-time employment, leaving a number of children at home with no one to care for them…Some children were simply left to crawl on their own and to find food to eat from the floor” [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 23, Page 53]. In 1962, children in Chongqing city developed myriad health problems, including parasitic diseases, as well as over 167,000 children cases of malnutrition or rickets, caused by a combination of poor diets and a lack of exposure to sunlight, since “mothers lock up their children indoors because they have to go to work” [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 23, Page 54].

Orphaned children in particular face perilous and harrowing conditions. At the Gaoling district orphanage, employees “failed to feed the orphans regular meals, leaving the children starving” [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 16, Page 48]. Out of desperation, some orphans “regularly… [rummaged] around local market restaurants for leftovers. Some also went to look for wild grass, dead fish, shrimp, and toads to eat,” causing several deaths from food poisoning [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 16, Page 48]. Stories from the Hongqi orphanage indicate widespread physical abuse of orphaned children [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 16, Page 48]. Some families in Yinging offered orphans in need of a roof over their heads a place to stay, only to “[deprive] them of food, [beat] them, [scold] them, and [eat] up the orphan’s grain ration” [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 18, Page 49]. All of these accounts of women and children being subjected to inhumane conditions during the past three years leave me worried that we have failed the up and coming generations.

I am also immensely worried about the long term consequences of a collapse of a trusting peasant and cadre relationship, an issue which has befallen many villages due to blatant cadre abuses. I learned from an old friend located in Wanxian county that local cadres “unlawfully set up private courts, jails, and labor camps,” and employed cruel methods of torture which are essentially beyond one’s worst imagination [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 3, Page 21]. Reports from other villages have painted a similar picture. According to a 1959 report from Guangdong province, for instance, “‘private prisons’ run by the commune are widespread in many regions. In most cases these private prisons are used to deal with ‘the people’ rather than ‘the enemy’” [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 7, Page 28]. I am immensely worried about the idea that cadres are shattering their relationships with the common people by ruthlessly abusing them, because this could lead to a general lack of trust in the Party and its policies in the future and a complete deterioration of the mass line.

The distribution of valuable labor and resources during the Great Leap Forward is also something which alarms me, as it has the potential to negatively impact our nation’s economic health and growth in the years to come. After seeing the barren fields in many parts of the Chinese countryside with my own eyes, I have come to the grim conclusion that local cadres have repeatedly inflated their harvests in their reports, painting a false picture of prosperity for the leaders at the top of the Party [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 43, Page 87]. Despite the need for China to devote significant time, resources, and labor to the agricultural sector if it wants to produce an abundance of food for its people, agricultural production has generally fallen by the wayside in terms of Party priorities – “agricultural land became wasteland, and unattended livestock died” [Zhou Xun, Page 73]. In recent years, the Party very enthusiastically mobilized people to work in heavy industry production, sometimes to the detriment of other invaluable industries, especially agriculture and consumer goods [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 40, Page 83].

Even though significant resources have been devoted to industrial production, I heard many accounts that these resources have not been allocated as efficiently as they should have been. In July of 1959, Peng Dehuai lamented this lack of carefully coordinated planning, writing, “an excessive number of capitalist construction projects were hastily started in 1958. With part of the funds being dispersed, completion of some essential projects had to be postponed” [Peng Dehuai, 436]. China’s overall steel production has increased significantly over the past few years, but there are a few vital questions we need to ask ourselves: where are the raw materials used to produce this steel coming from, and what are we gaining from this increased production? An investigative report from 1961 in Yongxing, Qi County found that useful household items were melted down and used in industrial production: “peasants were told to ‘contribute’ their private property, including pots and pans, jars, and coffins during the iron- and steel-work campaign” [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 31, Page 75]. The steel that was produced had little to no practical usage, yet people from across the entire nation were still instructed to create backyard steel furnaces of their own. Peng Dehuai reflected that “in the nationwide campaign for the production of iron and steel, too many small blast furnaces were built with a waste of material, money, and manpower” [Peng Dehuai, 437].

Hastily conceived and poorly planned construction projects, the emphasis on rapid industrialization, and the neglect of the agricultural sector have all combined to have a particularly virulent effect on China’s environment. Mao has long advocated for close planting and deep plowing techniques, which will have immensely detrimental repercussions on crop yields for years to come [Mao, Talks at Beidaihe, Page 162]. An illuminating report on the destruction of forestland in the northwest of China indicated that as of October 1962, one-fifth of closed forestland had been dilapidated, and as much as one-third of open forests had been chopped down [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 44, Page 88]. The report highlighted the deleterious effects of this deforestation as well, stating that “the destruction of the forest has caused soil erosion and sandstorms and reduced the amount of water resources” [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 44, Page 88]. Due to poorly constructed irrigation systems and canals, some farm fields have become waterlogged and alkalized. In Hunan province, I spoke with a peasant who recited a local saying to me: “the drought happens for just one season, but alkalization will last a lifetime” [edited by Zhou Xun, Document 45, Page 89]. Some local implementations of the Great Leap have frankly wreaked havoc upon the landscape and the environment, and farmers will surely feel the effects of this for the foreseeable future.

While I have faith that Chairman Mao and the rest of the Party will get our nation back on track, I am saddened that so many people throughout China have experienced such destruction, disease, and death, and I worry about the impacts that this period will have on agricultural production and our youth. I hope all of my loyal readers have stayed safe and healthy during this treacherous time, weathering the storm that has afflicted our nation as of late. I look forward to writing again soon.

Sincerely, Lei Ju

Dear Readers, 

It would be an understatement to say that the Chinese countryside has experienced a whirlwind of changes since I wrote my last piece about the CCP’s presence in Yenan. I apologize sincerely to my readers for letting so many years pass in between my dispatches, but during these years, I have been busy on the ground as a member of a work team in a remote village in the North, implementing the land reform campaign in my assigned village, trying to bring what the Party calls fanshen to the poor peasants who live there, while also seeking to experience this fanshen for myself by experiencing the revolution directly. I felt ready to finally “[wake] up from a dream,” as one young intellectual from a landlord family told me would happen to me if I participated directly in land reform [DeMare, 163]. Chairman Mao and the Communist Party have reported consistently that members of the peasant class nationwide have been rising “like a fierce wind or tempest” to “break through all the trammels which bind them and rush forward along the road to liberation,” casting aside the bloodsucking tyrants, just as Chairman Mao predicted would happen all the way back in 1927 [Mao, “Peasant Movement in Hunan,” 42]. In the eyes of the Party, the mass campaign is integral to fundamentally turning the long-established world order and the entrenched peasant mentality upside down. Today, I am seeking to determine whether this grand narrative aligns with the realities which all work teams were met with across the country. 

 

I first arrived in the countryside singing the songs of the revolution and donning a Russian-style jacket as if I were from the opening scene of Love in Redland [DeMare, 40]. During the early days, I met a lot of middle peasants who reminded me of “Old Gu” from Ding Ling’s novel The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River [DeMare, 38]. They were generally “insular and fearful of outsiders” because they owned the land that they worked, and were hesitant to engage in the process of land reform, worried that us work teams might one day turn against them [Mao, “How to Differentiate Classes,” 138 ; DeMare, 38]. I realized that I had quite the daunting task ahead of me to encourage the poor and middle peasants to speak their bitterness. 

Upon arrival, I moved in with a widow and her children, poor peasants who paid rent on the land they worked and cultivated [Mao, “How to Differentiate Classes,” 139]. The widow told me initially that her landlord was a nice enough man, but I saw right through her attempt at old-fashioned, feudal politeness. She took quite some time to open up to me, but eventually, as I taught her about the economic exploitation that she had undoubtedly been subjected to at the landlord’s hand, and about all the struggle fruits that would be hers as soon as she opened up to me, she finally broke down. She confided that she had been sexually assaulted by her landlord, and she even had suspicions that he had somehow been behind her late husband’s death! For months afterward, my eyes would well up with tears just thinking about all that she told me she’d been through. I convinced her to speak out against her landlord at the village’s next struggle session, which quickly became a rather violent affair as a crowd of villagers spat on him, ridiculed him, placed a dunce cap on his head, and proceeded to beat him [DeMare, 119]. At the time, I felt so proud of these villagers for standing up on behalf of this poor, innocent woman, who received that evil landlord’s best farming equipment as a result of having been brave enough to speak out against him [DeMare, 66].

 

I was optimistic once my village’s campaign wrapped up, and I have since traveled to other villages and received similar glowing reports. I even had the chance to speak with William Hinton, a work team member from Long Bow, about the immense changes that land reform had brought to the countryside through fanshen, not merely economic changes, but political and cultural ones as well. Hinton recounted to me that fanshen meant “to throw off superstition and study science, to abolish ‘word blindness’ and learn to read, to cease considering women as chattels and establish equality between the sexes, to do away with appointed village magistrates and replace them with elected councils. It meant to enter a new world” [DeMare, 152]. Personally, I am most entranced by Hinton’s claim that fanshen can bring gender equality to our society, and I know other women feel the same way. I spoke with a woman named Li Xiuying who told me, “before liberation, women had to do whatever they were told. They had no rights. The government’s first major legislation made women legally equal to men” [A Century of Revolution, the Mao Years, 4:52]. As Li Xiuying said, the Marriage Law promises the abolishment of “the supremacy of man over woman” and the advent of “free choice of both partners,” and “equal rights for both sexes” [the 1950 Marriage Law, 235]. The Party promises a double fanshen for women, claiming that they will finally be freed from both economic and gender based oppression [DeMare, 159].

 

However, I also encountered people who did not have such positive things to say about the implementation of land reform. Some married peasant women reported to me that while they legally received a land deed of their very own, their husband assumed full control over it, so they did not feel as though much had changed for them after all [DeMare, 161]. A female party leader explained sadly to me that many women were “limited by patriarchal norms, few child care alternatives, and inexperience in agricultural production” [DeMare, 162]. Such accounts make me worry that the promise of double fanshen for women has been a mere façade. 

 

I have begun to worry that in many villages, possibly including the very village which I toiled in with my fellow work team members, land reform did not accomplish all that it was intended to accomplish. I have heard reports from many villages that rural poverty still abounds, sometimes even after two or three rounds of land reform [DeMare, 170]. I spoke to many “Old Gu” figures, middle peasants who had worried since the beginning that they would become the next targets of struggle, and I learned that their fears were not always unfounded [DeMare, 38]. Sometimes they were mislabeled as rich peasants or landlords and wrongfully rendered destitute or even executed, as happened to Tang Zhankui in Zhang Ailing’s novel Love in Redland [DeMare, 151]. Poor peasants who still had very little land to call their own sometimes turned their jealousy and bitterness upon middle peasants [DeMare, 169]. 

 

I also learned of accounts that desires for material wealth have plagued the land reform process. A work team member from a village that neighbors my assigned village recounted the cadre corruption that had plagued any attempts at land reform, as the cadre saved the best struggle fruits for himself [DeMare, 171]. Even poor peasants have sometimes gotten carried away, marching into urban spaces in search of absentee landlords and their relatives, imposing “exploitation bills” upon them [DeMare, 170].

 

I have even begun to doubt the validity of the story of the widow whose home I moved into; this weighs heavily on my heart. Anecdote after anecdote about peasants spinning tall tales about all of the oppression they’d been subjected to has awakened me to the fact that “as land reform unfolded, the ability to speak bitterness during struggle meetings often resulted in direct economic benefit. Peasants who claimed to have suffered the most feudal exploitation stood to receive a greater share of the fruits of struggle” [DeMare, 66]. Was this widow a mere opportunist?

 

During the process of land reform, I was only able to see my tiny piece of the puzzle. Based on the experiences that I had as a part of a work team, I believed that the grand Maoist narrative was coming true: the peasants were awakening, the bloodsucking tyrants were being immobilized, and the women were no longer prisoners in their own homes. However, reading revolutionary novels and hearing other accounts from people on the ground have opened my eyes to the possibility that land reform is not all that it has promised to be. 

 

Stay safe, my loyal readers. Until next time, Lei Ju.

Dear Readers, 

 

I have been assigned the task of investigating why so many people from across China have been choosing to make the treacherous journey to Yenan, the remote and impoverished location that the Chinese Communist Party has established as their wartime base. I made the arduous voyage to Yenan myself in order to talk to some of the people who have settled there, and to learn more about what it is about life there that has compelled people to venture out there. Through my conversations with various people who have recently arrived at Yenan, I learned that since the occurrence of the Long March, the CCP has been idolized and venerated for their immense bravery and dedication, and Mao Zedong has become the Party’s undisputed leader. It may seem paradoxical that the Long March could have strengthened the Party when it contributed to the deaths of so many people, but those who remained emerged more dedicated to the cause than ever: “although the Long March was a tactical defeat, it had very beneficial psychological and organizational effects and gave the Communists an important strategic advantage. Psychologically, the Long March was not unlike Valley Forge in the American Revolution. The suffering and heroism actually strengthened the movement and proved that it was indomitable. Organizationally, the Long March clarified the leadership of the Party” [Dietrich, 25].

On top of this element of hero worship which is inspiring people to make the journey to Yenan, I learned that there are several aspects of the CCP’s current policies that are appealing to people from all different backgrounds, from peasants to intellectuals to elites. The CCP recruits and trains people who are willing and able to fight Japan. The CCP also advocates novel ideas about the importance of convergence between the leaders and the masses, the necessity of dismantling normative hierarchies and eliminating elitism in favor of cultivating a culture of cooperation, and about the role that the military should play in society, through the formation of the Red Army. A lot of these new CCP ideas become even more appealing when presented in contrast to the current state of the KMT, which people argue is plagued by military weakness, corruption, and hierarchy.

Perhaps one of the biggest reasons that people are drawn to Yenan is because of the CCP’s focus on mobilizing the populace in the fight against Japan, primarily through guerilla warfare tactics. The war against Japan is indicative of a larger CCP goal which appeals heavily to many: the goal of eliminating imperialist influence within China. I had the opportunity to speak with a woman named Guo Qi-min about why she came to Yenan, and she said, “I went to the anti-Japanese university in Yenan in the fall of 1938. We had classes on current affairs, philosophy, and so on…we got up early in the morning. We did morning drills and we learned how to use weapons to fight the Japanese” [Williams, 1:10:50]. Training to fight the Japanese with the CCP in Yenan is more appealing to many than the idea of training with the Nationalist Army, as catastrophes have occurred due to Chiang Kai-Shek’s decision making. For instance, in 1938, Chiang Kai-Shek opened the dikes of the Yellow River with the goal of preventing the Japanese from traveling onward. However, the Chinese people who lived in the area were not warned, leading to thousands of villages flooding, millions of families becoming homeless, and hundreds of thousands of people dying, and the tactic did not even work to hinder the Japanese [Williams, 1:07:15]. 

The CCP also stresses the necessity of convergence between the leaders and the masses – a novel ideology that appeals to many whose voices have never been heard within traditional systems of government. In Yenan, Mao Zedong introduced the principle of mass line, or “solidarity in the effort to achieve the goals of the people,” which he argued can be achieved only through an intimate, sustained relationship between the Party and the people [Dietrich, 27]. It can even be said that “instead of mere majority rule, Mao aimed at total solidarity between the CCP and the masses” [Dietrich, 27]. The Party and the people must ultimately become one in their ideas. To use Mao’s own words from “Resolution of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on Methods of Leadership”: “correct leadership must come from the masses and go to the masses” [Mao, 118]. 

Social hierarchies, something that are ever present in traditional Confucian society, also dissipate in Yenan in favor of unity and cooperation. In 1936, Edgar Snow interviewed Mao, and reported that he embodied the “simplicity and naturalness of the Chinese peasant”, living in caves alongside the rank and file of the Red Army [Snow, 185]. This idea that the leaders experience the same material conditions as the masses appeals to many who are dismayed with the rumored corruption of Chiang Kai-Shek’s wife’s family, who have been accused of using government money to their own advantage.

 All members of society who agree with the cause of the CCP can be included in life at Yenan, no matter their background. The CCP seeks to eliminate intellectual elitism in society, instead making cultural productions such as literature and art accessible and relatable to the masses. Mao argues in “Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art” that workers in literature and art cannot be out-of-touch with the people, but instead must be deeply in tune with them. He writes, “yours is the language of intellectuals, theirs is the language of the popular masses” [Mao, 114]. The CCP seeks to eliminate hierarchies and elitism, but that does not mean it refuses to work with those who have previously enjoyed a superior social or economic position, so long as they are open to change. I spoke with a Communist officer by the name of Wang Ping who emphasized the fact that the CCP is willing to bring together people of all socioeconomic backgrounds, telling me, “We didn’t attack the rich. We even allied with landlords as long as they were not collaborators and wanted to resist” [Williams, 1:12:10].

As I have touched upon already, The Red Army was established here in Yenan, and it operates in ways that are very different from the role that the military has played in Chinese society in the past. The Red Army operates under very close Party control, and its ultimate purpose is to implement and reinforce the previously mentioned social, economic, and political changes to Chinese society [Dietrich, 24]. In “Talks at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art,” Mao argued that the military plays a vital role in shaping the new fabric of Chinese society, writing, “victory over the enemy depends primarily on armies with guns in their hands, but this kind of army alone is not enough… we still need a cultural army” [Mao, 113]. He goes on to argue that this cultural army can diminish the impact or reach of both “China’s feudal culture and the slavish culture that serves imperialist aggression” [Mao, 114]. Mao also views the Army as a tool for practicing the mass line. He states that “All members of the people’s army have a conscious discipline, fighting not for the private interests of a few, but for the interests of the broad masses and the whole nation” [Mao, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, 52]. Within the Army itself, Mao seeks to dismantle normative hierarchies that are perpetuated by Confucian ideology; he stresses that “officers teach soldiers, soldiers teach officers, and soldiers teach each other” [Mao, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, 80].

The journey may be perilous and the conditions upon arrival may be barren, but there is a lot about life at Yenan that appeals deeply to many people. A chance to defeat an imperialist aggressor, the formation of the mass line, the dismantling of hierarchies and elitism, and the allures of the Red Army are all enticing Chinese citizens. One could even say that they are coming to Yenan “because they [want] to fight Japan, and because there [is] a sense here of building a new society” [Williams, 1:09:40]. Stay safe, my readers, until next time. 

 

Sincerely, Lei Ju

Dear Readers,

I have been asked to investigate why many Chinese people have come to believe that the Chinese Communist Party may offer solutions to the myriad problems that China is currently facing. I have found through my work that the multifaceted ideologies of the CCP appeal to many of the downtrodden members of Chinese society, whether they are oppressed socially, economically, politically, or all of the above. They believe that the CCP has the potential to liberate them as individuals, and grow the Chinese economy, all at once. I was able to get out and talk to a few new CCP supporters, including a young woman, a factory worker, a friend from my college, and my brother-in-law’s parents, who are agrarian peasants like most of our country’s people, to gain an understanding of their varied motivations.

First of all, while there are certainly many women, especially older women, who consider themselves content with the status quo, there are also a lot of younger women and especially intellectual women who are entranced by the changes that CCP ideology promises to them. I spoke with a young, single woman named Xie Pie-lan who explained that she was interested in joining the Communist Revolution because she did not want to submit to an arranged marriage to a much older man that she didn’t know: “People told me if I joined the revolution, I would have my freedom. That I could choose who I wanted to marry. Well, if I didn’t join, I’d have to marry this man who was over 30. So I thought if revolution could save me from this, I would join” [China: A Century of Revolution, China in Revolution, 28:45]. One of Mao Zedong’s earliest published writings is about the tragic death of a young woman from his hometown, named Miss Chao, who committed suicide rather than submitting to an arranged marriage, and he blames the “iron net” cast around Miss Chao and other young women like her by traditional Confucian society for her death [Johnson, 29]. The Party advocates that women and men should get to choose who they get married to, and that women should no longer be subjected to long held traditional practices that limit them, like foot binding. Of course, this is appealing to individual young women vying for their freedoms, but my college friend also told me that it would be good for China as a whole. He read me a quote from Mao’s Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan that said, “With the increasing bankruptcy of the rural economy in recent years, the basis for men’s domination over women has already been undermined [44-46].” What this means is that with China’s economy so poor, and so in need of growth, many people feel it is necessary that half of China’s population no longer be subjugated, because their work is needed to support the new China.

In addition to my conversation with Xie Pie-lan, I also managed to talk with a factory worker named Qui Hui-ying. While factory workers may make up only a small portion of China’s vast population, some Chinese people believe that they will play an integral role in shaping a new China. Qui Hui-ying told me, “I came to Shanghai when I was 12. We were so miserable; we had to work 17 hours a day. Later, a progressive worker in the factory told us that people were not born to be poor. One was poor because of the exploitation by others. There is exploitation by the capitalist on one hand and exploitation by the labor contractor on the other. You do the work and he takes the money” [China: A Century of Revolution, China in Revolution, 24:39]. I found out that this man worked in a factory that produces goods for people in other countries, especially England. He and many others feel as though China is not destined to be poor, but it is exploitation by other nations like England, the United States, and Japan which has rendered it poor. As Marx and Engels write in the Communist Manifesto, “the need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere” [476]. The CCP offers downtrodden people a concrete explanation as to why they have been plagued by economic troubles – foreign aggressors – instead of simply blaming economic conditions on “fate” as Confucian thought would do. The CCP plans to work towards shaking off foreign capitalist influence, which many citizens believe will restore dignity and vitality to the wonderful people of China.

As I have mentioned before, my brother-in-law’s parents are impoverished peasant farmers. European Marxism centers the power of the factory workers, who make up the primary labor source of many European countries, to spark revolution. As Mao argues in his Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan, however, peasant farmers are the key to revolution in China, because they are the nation’s primary laborers and producers [42]. I talked to my brother-in-laws parents to learn more about their lives and experiences. They told me that they had no choice but to pawn their property in order to afford a bride tax and other wedding expenses for the marriage of their oldest son [Deitrich, 13-14]. As their financial difficulties continued, they decided that they needed to have my brother-in-law, the youngest son in his family, enter into a matrilocal marriage, despite the shame they felt it brought upon themselves and their son. They say that they have “scratched out a living” ever since, through “day labor” and “handicrafts” [Deitrich, 14]. My brother-in-law’s parents would like to see a change in their material conditions, and the Chinese Communist Party promises that to them.

By emphasizing the economic growth of the nation of China, many Chinese people feel as though the Chinese Communist Party will be able to offer them freedom from all sorts of exploitation. The ropes of patriarchy, imperialism, and patriarchy have bound the people of China too tightly for far too long – and the CCP pledges to cut all of these ties free.

 

Thank you for reading!

Hello, my name is Lei Ju. I was born on April 15, 1910, along the outskirts of Yunfu, China. I am a female college student in the city of Guangzhou who has just turned twenty. In my hometown of Yunfu, I live with my father, who is an economically stable merchant, my two younger sisters, both of whom are studying at home, my older sister, my older sister’s husband, who has entered into the same profession as my father, and my nephew. My mother passed away not long after the birth of my youngest sister. My grandfather was a tailor, but he passed away a few years ago, and my grandmother passed away not long afterwards – my father claimed it was of a broken heart. I have never met my mother’s parents, because they live very far away. I know that my father feels disappointment that he never had any biological sons, but we are lucky that he is financially well-off, because that meant that we could arrange a matrilocal marriage for my elder sister, and my father could gain the son that he always wanted and even needed. Her husband was the youngest son in his family, and his parents were impoverished peasants, so ultimately becoming a part of our family was a good choice for him, although I know it brings him shame that his last name, and his son’s last name, is that of his wife’s family. Personally, I am very grateful that my older sister has married, because it has taken the pressure off of me to do so, and it has opened up more opportunities for me, like studying at college. My father supports my studies, because I have always been one of the brightest youth in Yunfu, but he also warns me not to get my hopes up for a high-paying job, being all too aware of the realities of opportunities for women in our society. I am most interested in becoming a teacher for young girls after I finish school. Since arriving at college, I have met a lot of people with very new and exciting ideas. They tell me that society will soon be turned upon its head; the college will be filled with women, instead of us being few and far between. The young people, and the working people, will have power for the first time. I hope to keep learning more and more about these new ideas that have been swirling around. I decided to take this job as a reporter, even though it is quite a dangerous job, because I want to be on the front lines of making a change in our society. I never had to pay very much attention to politics or economic issues throughout my life thus far, because my father was always on top of our family’s finances, and I always knew we didn’t have anything to worry about, but I no longer want to turn a blind eye to all of the issues that are going on in our country right now. I want to do my part to improve our society for everyone, the girls who are lucky enough to go to college, and the vast majority of girls, who are certainly not. Thank you for reading!