Renditions no. 50 (Autumn 1998)

There and Back Again

December 1998 marked the 30th anniversary of Mao Zedong's directive sending twenty million urban high-school graduates (zhiqing) “down” to the countryside to work as agricultural labourers beside their peasant-farmer hosts. Richard King, zhiqing literature expert, guest-edits this issue of selections spanning the early 1970s to the mid-1990s. These writings bring to vivid life the experiences of the first generation raised under Chinese Socialism.

Table of contents