Acknowledgements; Introduction; Preface; Unloading Boats; Bathing in the River; A Snake Catcher's Story; Seven Souls Lost in the Heilong River; Lessons in Class Struggle; Our Daughter Born in the Great Northern Wilderness; My First Day in Yang Village; In the Reed Marsh; Dawn; Caught in a Blizzard; A Belt's Story; Dog Scare; Labor and Pay; Xishuangbanna Anecdotes-Leeches; Choosing the Destination of a Lifetime; Life in the Countryside; To Slaughter a Pig; Mao Buttons; Island of My Dreams; A Trip Home; Fish Shadows and Lasting Love; The Force of Circumstance; Author Biographies
Summary
Zhiqing: Stories from China's Special Generation presents the recollections of fourteen men and women who were "sent down" to the countryside during China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Teenagers or young adults at the time, the authors left school to heed Mao's call for China's "educated youth" (zhiqing) to go to the poorest provinces and distant borders, where they worked with the local people in villages or on military farms and construction teams. From the Great Northern Wilderness to Hainan Island, their true-to-life stories illustrate the harsh realities of rural ex
