by Cook, James A. ,Goldstein, Joshua,Johnson, Matthew D. ,Schmalzer, Sigrid
Even for films whose errors only warranted them a return trip to the cutting room, the list of indictments was extensive. Sections of On the Xin’an River, which had emphasized nonstop work schedules, were now seen as failing to conform to proper standards for dividing labor and leisure. A segment from Little Masters of the Great Leap Forward, which portrayed a scheme for eradicating illiteracy in seven days, was labeled “boastful” (fukua). Other films had depicted visions of prosperity and technological achievement: a pig for every mu of land; super-abundant rice, fish, and cotton yields; a cannery whose standards of productive efficiency “overtook America” (gan Meiguo). However, in 1962, such claims were not understood as inspirational, but rather were labeled “unrealistic,” “impractical,” and “adventurist.”35 Whereas many Leap-era films had cast negative light on “conservative” party secretaries and mocked old peasants who opposed the Leap’s utopian schemes, these same mocking depictions were now criticized as “undemocratic” and “disrespectful” to post-Leap policies. Most of the eight films targeted for permanent removal from circulation were documentary-style features. Because the Leap was now seen as a failure, cultural officials advocated taking a scalpel to unsightly representations that had once served as emblems of utopian promise:
Many films we have inspected are documentary-style features on industry and agriculture that were written and produced based on “real people and real events.” These documentary-style features were relatively prompt in reflecting the imagery of major developments in socialist construction since 1958. . . [yet] at the same time that they reflected the objective “mainstream” (zhuliu) of this development, they also unavoidably reflected the shortcomings and errors which existed [as part of] contemporary, objective reality.36
Voluntarism, once seen as a catalyst for social change, had become a liability. The effects of this post-Leap “clean-up” on filmmakers were mixed. Some actors who had participated enthusiastically in the Leap, or had been chosen for prominent roles, found themselves snubbed for major parts thereafter because their faces might remind audiences of this failed experiment. For those behind the camera—directors, writers, and cinematographers, for example—participation in Leap-era filmmaking was often simply another career stepping-stone or opportunity to display political loyalty.37 Others, as a result of their time spent in the countryside, saw the Great Leap Forward as a failure; production went on, but cynicism set in.38
In what sense, then, did these films serve the politicized objective of “shaping” mass opinion? In what sense can they be considered propaganda? For observers like us, living in liberal democracies today, it might seem that what marks Leap-era films as propagandistic was their constant promotion of selfless and cheery activism in the service of a state-mandated developmentalist agenda. Within the context of film or art, this kind of repetition and naïve idealism might strike us as unpleasant or absurd. Yet these films were not intended as such, and likely not viewed in this way at the time. Hopefully our examination has suggested ways in which people might have experienced the production and viewing of these films as engaging, inspiring and even entertaining. By exploring both the distinctive generic form of Leap-era films—their novel mixture of documentary elements with feature-film storylines that blurred fact with fiction, reality with utopia, and present with future—and the particular historical moment they occupied in the building of China’s film infrastructure, this chapter has aimed to make the varied historical reality of experiencing these films comprehensible.
Though the strained optimism seems the most glaringly propagandistic aspect of Great Leap Forward films, their removal from circulation during the early 1960s suggests another, perhaps more fundamental characteristic of the propaganda system: film, and other cultural forms as well, were used to represent a kind of map of the possible. Propaganda, in the end, was aimed at communicating ideas about what kind of reality was desirable, and created by party planners who sought to determine how ordinary citizens should view their world. Once the disasters of the Leap required a return to more prudent policies, cultural propaganda had to follow suit. Suddenly the party’s earlier endorsement of spontaneous initiative as the engine of transformation was not only revoked but disparaged. In defining Leap-era films in terms of the limitations they possessed (political or esthetic), we fail to see how they might have appealed to audiences precisely because they represented something new that depicted one’s familiar surroundings, and even the viewer herself, as existing on the cusp of a profound transformation leading to future prosperity. Propaganda’s most salient feature lies not only in the effort to impart this sense of possibility, but also in periodically revoking it.
Notes
1. Sheryl Tuttle Ross, “Understanding Propaganda: The Epistemic Merit Model and Its Application to Art,” Journal of Aesthetic Education 36, no. 1 (Spring 2002), 17. For a more general discussion of wartime propaganda and the cinema, see Nicholas Reeves, The Power of Film Propaganda: Myth or Reality? (London: Cassell, 1999).
2. Timothy Cheek, Propaganda and Culture in Mao’s China: Deng Tuo and the Intelligentsia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 15. See also Chang-tai Hung, War and Popular Culture: Resistance in Wartime China, 1937–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
3. Julian Chang, “The Mechanics of State Propaganda: The People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union in the 1950s,” in Timothy Cheek and Tony Saich, eds., New Perspectives on State Socialism in China (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1997), 76.
4. Ibid., 80.
5. Ci Jiwei, Dialectic of the Chinese Revolution: From Utopianism to Hedonism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 140.
6. Then and now, Great Leap Forward construction projects remain landmarks of socialist progress. The Ming Tombs project was second in publicity only to the massive project to expand Tiananmen Square into the world’s biggest public square as well as the site of the Great Hall of the People. The project was also featured in another musical film of the same era, Ming Tombs Capriccio (Shisan ling changxiangqu, Beijing Film Studio, 1958).
7. Wang Yunman , “Zhide zhongshi de ‘Shuiku shang de gesheng’” [Song on the Reservoir: A Worthwhile Film], Renmin ribao, July 3, 1958: 8.
8. Mao Zedong, “Speech at the Supreme State Conference (excerpts)” (January 28, 1958), in Stuart Schram, trans., Chairman Mao Talks to the People, Talks and Letters: 1956–1971 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974), 92–93.
9. Maurice Meisner, “Utopian Goals and Ascetic Values in Maoist Ideology,” in Marxism, Maoism, and Utopianism: Eight Essays (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), 118.
10. “Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu jin zhong ming chun zai nongcun zhong pubian kaizhan shehuizhuyi he hongchanzhuyi jiaoyu yundong de zhishi” [Chinese Communist Party central directive concerning the rural socialist and Communist education movement to be launched everywhere this winter and next spring] (August 29, 1958), in Zhonggong zhongyang xuanchuan bu bangong ting, Zhongyang dang’an guan bianjiu bu, ed., Zhongguo gongchan dang xuanchuan gongzuo wenxian xuanbian, 1957–1992, ([Beijing]: Xuexi chubanshe, [1993]), 104–105.
11. Ibid., 106.
12. Gao Weijin, Zhongguo xinwen jilu dianying shi (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 2003), 171.
13. Fang Fang, Zhongguo jilu pian fazhan shi (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe, 2003), 229. In scientific and educational film (kejiao pian) production as well, filmmakers blurred the line between fact and fiction, or the real and the desired. If they were successful in this regard, this was due at least in part to strength in numbers. During 1958, the number of these films produced was equal to the entire national output between 1951 and 1957—a total of 137 individual titles. Many were manufactured by provincial studios which had been set up for the purpose once the Leap was underway.
14. BJMA, 1-24-10 (November 1958), Anonymous. “Beijing shi wenhua gongzuo huiyi zongjie fayan yaodian” [Important points from a summary speech on cultural work in Beijing municipality], 1.
15. Author interv
iews, Beijing, June 2005.
16. Author interview, Beijing, June 2005.
17. Author interview, Beijing, April 2005. These “satellite films” were also called “leap forward films” (yue jin pian).
18. Author interview, Beijing, March 2005.
19. Author interview, Beijing, April 2005.
20. Author interview, Beijing, March 2005.
21. SXPA 232-190 (n.d.), Zhongguo renmin gongheguo wenhua bu, “Guanyu cujin dianying faxing fangying gongzuo Dayuejin de tongzhi” [Great Leap Forward circular concerning the acceleration of film distribution and projection], 1.
22. Gao Weijin, Zhongguo xinwen jilu dianying shi, 165.
23. SXPA 232-205 (1959), Shaanxi sheng dianying faxing fangying gongsi, “1958 nian 7 zhi 1959 nian 6 yue dianying faxing fangying gongzuo zongjie baogao” [Summary Report on Distribution and Projection Work, July 1958 to June 1959], 5.
24. Ibid., 6.
25. Ibid., 9.
26. Ibid., 10.
27. Author interview, Beijing, April 2005.
28. BJMA 101-1-690 (n.d.), Beijing shi zong gonghui xuanchuan bu, “Beijing shi zong gonghui ba nian (1951–1958) dianying fangying gongzuo zongjie” [Summary of eight years (1951–1958) of film projection work in the Beijing municipal federation of trade unions], 15.
29. “Pochu mixin, jiefang sixiang, dadan chuangzao: ba xinwen jilu dianying de fangying gongzuo tuixiang gaochao,” Dazhong dianying 13 (July 11, 1958), 24.
30. Shaanxi sheng dianying faxing fangying gongsi, “1958 nian 7 zhi 1959 nian6 yue dianying faxing fangying gongzuo zongjie baogao,” 1–2.
31. Li Duoyu, Zhongguo dianying bai nian, 1905–1976 (shang bian) (Beijing: Zhongguo guangbo dianshi chubanshe, 2005), 279.
32. Ibid., 9.
33. Author interview, Beijing, May 2005.
34. SHMA B3-2-109 (May 23, 1962), Shanghai Tianma dianying zhipian chang, “Baogao” [Report], 1. A similar inspection of scientific, educational, and documentary films produced between 1958 and 1961 took place approximately two months later. See SHMA B3-2-109 (July 7, 1962), Shanghai shi dianying ju, “Baogao” [Report], n.p. Both documents were submitted to the central Ministry of Culture.
35. SHMA B3-2-109 (May 23, 1962), Shanghai Tianma dianying zhipian chang, “Baogao,” 4–5.
36. SHMA B3-2-109 (May 26, 1962), Shanghai Haiyan dianying zhipian chang, “Guanyu yingpian jiancha de baogao” [Report concerning film inspections], 1.
37. Author interview, Beijing, January 2005.
38. Author interview, Beijing, March 2005.
Chapter 13
Images, Memories, and Lives of Sent-down Youth in Yunnan
Xiaowei Zheng
In 2006, I lived in the city of Chengdu in southwestern Sichuan Province. My apartment was about a mile west of downtown, in a building off a small alleyway. The alley was noisy during the day and quiet at night, much like any other urban residential area in China. At first, there seemed to be nothing special about it. However, as time passed, an unusual teahouse caught my eye. Set in a three-room condo on the first floor of a building about a hundred meters from where I lived, this teahouse was always bustling. Almost every night, a group of middle-aged men and women congregated, chatting away about household chores, reading evening newspapers, and playing Mahjong.
Like most Chinese cities, Chengdu is changing fast—state-owned factories laying off workers, suburban farmers losing their land, and house prices skyrocketing far past what an ordinary resident could easily afford. The teahouse regulars are just like their fellow Chengdu residents, striving hard to make a living and survive the changes. They are among the most ordinary of people. Without asking, I would never have known who they were—that all of them as teenagers had packed their suitcases, left home, and spent eight precious years on a rubber farm in the border region of Yunnan Province. They were just some of the vast number of urban people sent to the countryside over the course of the Mao era (see Brown’s chapter in this volume). More specifically, they were among the twenty million middle school and high school graduates sent to the countryside for reeducation between 1968 and 1979, and still more specifically, among the one hundred and forty thousand who worked in the Yunnan Construction Corps on China’s southern border.1 Having negligible power or status, their past is of little interest to their neighbors, siblings, or even their children. In this highly pragmatic city, few people pay attention to their history; only in this little teahouse do they have a place to recollect the past and share some old memories.
The people I met in the teahouse all belong to a special generation in the history of the People’s Republic of China. Born between 1947 and 1955, they have experienced a life trajectory marked by sharp ups and downs closely tied to Chinese politics. In 1966, when Mao sought to reinvigorate China’s revolutionary culture and curb the influence of Liu Shaoqi and other “moderates” among the party leadership, he turned to China’s youth to be vanguards of the newly conceived “Cultural Revolution.” Many urban youth jumped at the chance to become “Red Guards.” When the Red Guards were disbanded in 1968, some of these same youth responded enthusiastically to Chairman Mao’s call to join the “Up to the Mountains, Down to the Countryside” movement and rushed to settle in China’s rural areas, where they were to learn from the peasants and put their schooling to work for China’s “new socialist countryside.” Others resisted the call but found themselves compelled nonetheless by a state anxious both to find occupations for a boom generation of urban youth and to quell the extensive havoc, no matter how “revolutionary,” the Red Guards had wreaked in the cities. The majority of them did not return to the cities until the late 1970s, having “lost” their youth and needing to cope with a now-unfamiliar urban life.
I had the good fortune to make friends with some of these former “sent-down youth” (the standard term for young, urban people sent to the countryside) and talk with them in depth about their experiences. They have generously shared their memories with me and provided me with precious photos, sketches, paintings, and posters that they have carefully kept from the Yunnan years. These artifacts not only help visualize the stories they tell, but also offer a serious challenge to the one-dimensional picture that prevails in the dominant narratives about the lives of sent-down youth. The tales they relate in the teashop also speak in compelling ways to the role that visual images play in producing history and memory. In this essay, I seek to answer the questions: How do people remember the Up to the Mountains, Down to the Countryside movement? What role do visual materials play in depicting the lives of sent-down youth? How do these most ordinary sent-down youth reflect upon and come to terms with their past, and, how do these memories interact with their lives today?
Dominant Literatures: A “Scarred Youth” versus “No Regret for Their Lost Youth”
Before getting to know these former sent-down youth, my understanding of their experiences was heavily shaped by the existing literature written on the subject, in which two rather different depictions are most prevalent. On one side is the depressing, critical depiction, where sent-downers were the political victims of the ailing autocrat Mao Zedong and his wicked cronies. As part of the human tragedy in the “ten years of chaos” of the Cultural Revolution, the lives of sent-down youth were filled with massive violence, unfairness, and cruelty. On the other side is the uplifting portrayal of their rural experiences, where sent-down youth were heroes and heroines. They sacrificed their adolescence on the altar of duty; they were idealistic and charismatic, and when looking back from the present, they “have no regret for their lost youth.”
The bleak representation of sent-down youth originated in works of “scar literature” that emerged soon after the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. The genre focused on the disastrous experiences of sent-down youth, intellectuals, and persecuted officials during the Cultural Revolution. In order to expose the inner wounds inflicted by the Cultural Revolution, writers of scar literature lamented their past sufferings and angrily denounced
the crimes committed by the so-called “Gang of Four” (leading members of the radical faction during the Cultural Revolution). In the late 1970s, scar literature helped people express grievances long restrained; thus, it quickly gained popularity and defined public memory of the Cultural Revolution in China at that time.
The total condemnation of the Cultural Revolution is also the norm in English-language writings. This is particularly noticeable in autobiographical memoirs, a genre that blossomed in the 1980s and 1990s and generated several bestsellers in the United States and other countries. Written in English and geared to the interests of a Western audience, these memoirs, with only few exceptions, proffer horror stories of Maoist China in which “the Orient is seen seeking salvation from an exalted Occident.”2 The narrators generally appear as heroic and moral individuals while they invest others with the role of persecutors. As literature scholar Chen Xiaomei observes, “These memoirs read like stories of survival, culminating in the obligatory happy ending in America or Europe.”3
Accounts emphasizing the horrors of the Cultural Revolution commonly incorporate images that emphasize the mob mentality that supposedly prevailed among youth. Typical examples found in history textbooks include photographs of throngs of young students waving the “little red book” of quotations from Chairman Mao in support of their godlike hero Chairman Mao and shots of humiliated cadres and professors forced to bow their heads low to withstand the attacks of their youthful assailants (Figure 13.1). In many well-liked literary writings, such as Jung Chang’s Wild Swans and Liang Heng’s Son of the Revolution, this visualization is so strong that the mere mention of the Cultural Revolution is enough to bring to mind images of torture and deprivation.