Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages

Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages PDF Author: Thomas P. Bernstein
Publisher: New Haven : Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300021356
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
In the first detailed analysis of the program by a Western scholar, Thomas Bernstein presents carefully documented information on the mobilization of youths in the cities, the problems they have encountered in adapting to life among the peasants, the contribution they have actually made to rural development, and the policy disputes that have arisen over the program.

Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages

Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages PDF Author: Thomas P. Bernstein
Publisher: New Haven : Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300021356
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
In the first detailed analysis of the program by a Western scholar, Thomas Bernstein presents carefully documented information on the mobilization of youths in the cities, the problems they have encountered in adapting to life among the peasants, the contribution they have actually made to rural development, and the policy disputes that have arisen over the program.

Going to the Countryside

Going to the Countryside PDF Author: Yu Zhang
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472054430
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, modern Chinese intellectuals, reformers, revolutionaries, leftist journalists, and idealistic youth had often crossed the increasing gap between the city and the countryside, which made the act of “going to the countryside” a distinctively modern experience and a continuous practice in China. Such a spatial crossing eventually culminated in the socialist state program of “down to the villages” movements during the 1960s and 1970s. What, then, was the special significance of “going to the countryside” before that era? Going to the Countryside deals with the cultural representations and practices of this practice between 1915 and 1965, focusing on individual homecoming, rural reconstruction, revolutionary journeys to Yan’an, the revolutionary “going down to the people” as well as going to the frontiers and rural hometowns for socialist construction. As part of the larger discourses of enlightenment, revolution, and socialist industrialization, “going to the countryside” entailed new ways of looking at the world and ordinary people, brought about new experiences of space and time, initiated new means of human communication and interaction, generated new forms of cultural production, revealed a fundamental epistemic shift in modern China, and ultimately created a new aesthetic, social, and political landscape. As a critical response to the “urban turn” in the past few decades, this book brings the rural back to the central concern of Chinese cultural studies and aims to bridge the city and the countryside as two types of important geographical entities, which have often remained as disparate scholarly subjects of inquiry in the current state of China studies. Chinese modernity has been characterized by a dual process that created problems from the vast gap between the city and the countryside but simultaneously initiated constant efforts to cope with the gap personally, collectively, and institutionally. The process of “crossing” two distinct geographical spaces was often presented as continuous explorations of various ways of establishing the connectivity, interaction, and relationship of these two imagined geographical entities. Going to the Countryside argues that this new body of cultural productions did not merely turn the rural into a constantly changing representational space; most importantly, the rural has been constructed as a distinct modern experiential and aesthetic realm characterized by revolutionary changes in human conceptions and sentiments.

The Red Guard Generation and Political Activism in China

The Red Guard Generation and Political Activism in China PDF Author: Guobin Yang
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231520484
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
Raised to be "flowers of the nation," the first generation born after the founding of the People's Republic of China was united in its political outlook and at first embraced the Cultural Revolution of 1966, but then split into warring factions. Investigating the causes of this fracture, Guobin Yang argues that Chinese youth engaged in an imaginary revolution from 1966 to 1968, enacting a political mythology that encouraged violence as a way to prove one's revolutionary credentials. This same competitive dynamic would later turn the Red Guard against the communist government. Throughout the 1970s, the majority of Red Guard youth were sent to work in rural villages, where they developed an appreciation for the values of ordinary life. From this experience, an underground cultural movement was born. Rejecting idolatry, these relocated revolutionaries developed a new form of resistance that signaled a new era of enlightenment, culminating in the Democracy Wall movement of the late 1970s and the Tiananmen protest of 1989. Yang's final chapter on the politics of history and memory argues that contemporary memories of the Cultural Revolution are factionalized along these lines of political division, formed fifty years before.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress PDF Author: Sijie Dai
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
ISBN: 037541309X
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
An enchanting literary debut—already an international best-seller. At the height of Mao’s infamous Cultural Revolution, two boys are among hundreds of thousands exiled to the countryside for “re-education.” The narrator and his best friend, Luo, guilty of being the sons of doctors, find themselves in a remote village where, among the peasants of Phoenix mountain, they are made to cart buckets of excrement up and down precipitous winding paths. Their meager distractions include a violin—as well as, before long, the beautiful daughter of the local tailor. But it is when the two discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation that their re-education takes its most surprising turn. While ingeniously concealing their forbidden treasure, the boys find transit to worlds they had thought lost forever. And after listening to their dangerously seductive retellings of Balzac, even the Little Seamstress will be forever transformed. From within the hopelessness and terror of one of the darkest passages in human history, Dai Sijie has fashioned a beguiling and unexpected story about the resilience of the human spirit, the wonder of romantic awakening and the magical power of storytelling.

A Social History of Maoist China

A Social History of Maoist China PDF Author: Felix Wemheuer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107123704
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
This new social history of Maoist China provides an accessible view of the complex and tumultuous period when China came under Communist rule.

Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains

Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains PDF Author: Laurel Snyder
Publisher: Yearling
ISBN: 0375847200
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
THIS IS THE tale of Lucy and her best friend, Wynston. Until recently, they spent their days paddling in the river, picking blackberries, and teasing each other mercilessly. But now, King Desmond has insisted that Wynston devote every spare second to ruby-shining and princess-finding. Lucy feels left out. So she sets off for the Scratchy Mountains to solve the mystery of her missing mother. When Wynston discovers that Lucy is gone, he tears after her, and together they embark on a series of strange and wonderful adventures.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (Newbery Honor Book)

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (Newbery Honor Book) PDF Author: Grace Lin
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0316052604
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
A Time Magazine 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time selection!​ A Reader’s Digest Best Children’s Book of All Time​! This stunning fantasy inspired by Chinese folklore is a companion novel to Starry River of the Sky and the New York Times bestselling and National Book Award finalist When the Sea Turned to Silver In the valley of Fruitless mountain, a young girl named Minli lives in a ramshackle hut with her parents. In the evenings, her father regales her with old folktales of the Jade Dragon and the Old Man on the Moon, who knows the answers to all of life's questions. Inspired by these stories, Minli sets off on an extraordinary journey to find the Old Man on the Moon to ask him how she can change her family's fortune. She encounters an assorted cast of characters and magical creatures along the way, including a dragon who accompanies her on her quest for the ultimate answer. Grace Lin, author of the beloved Year of the Dog and Year of the Rat returns with a wondrous story of adventure, faith, and friendship. A fantasy crossed with Chinese folklore, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is a timeless story reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz and Kelly Barnhill's The Girl Who Drank the Moon. Her beautiful illustrations, printed in full-color, accompany the text throughout. Once again, she has created a charming, engaging book for young readers.

Mao's Children in the New China

Mao's Children in the New China PDF Author: Yarong Jiang
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113635753X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Around 18 million young Chinese people were sent to the countryside between 1966 and 1976 as part of the Cultural Revolution. Mao's Children in the New China allows some of them to tell their moving stories in their own voices for the first time. In this inspiring collection of interviews with former Red Guards, members of the first generation to be born under Chairman Mao talk frankly about the dramatic changes which have occurred in China over the last two decades. In discussing the impact these changes have had on their own lives, the former revolutionaries give a direct insight into how ex-Maoists view contemporary China, revealing an attitude perhaps more critical than that of most Western commentators. These poignant memoirs tell the very personal stories of how people from all walks of life were affected by both the cultural revolution and Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms. They cover subjects as diverse as marriage and divorce, the privatization of industry, family relationships, universities and the stock market. Mao's Children in the New China is essential reading for all those interested in learning more about the personal and social history of modern China.

Ladies of the Canyons

Ladies of the Canyons PDF Author: Lesley Poling-Kempes
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816524947
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Ladies of the Canyons is the true story of remarkable women who left the security and comforts of genteel Victorian society and journeyed to the American Southwest in search of a wider view of themselves and their world. Educated, restless, and inquisitive, Natalie Curtis, Carol Stanley, Alice Klauber, and Mary Cabot Wheelwright were plucky, intrepid women whose lives were transformed in the first decades of the twentieth century by the people and the landscape of the American Southwest. Part of an influential circle of women that included Louisa Wade Wetherill, Alice Corbin Henderson, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Mary Austin, and Willa Cather, these ladies imagined and created a new home territory, a new society, and a new identity for themselves and for the women who would follow them. Their adventures were shared with the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and Robert Henri, Edgar Hewett and Charles Lummis, Chief Tawakwaptiwa of the Hopi, and Hostiin Klah of the Navajo. Their journeys took them to Monument Valley and Rainbow Bridge, into Canyon de Chelly, and across the high mesas of the Hopi, down through the Grand Canyon, and over the red desert of the Four Corners, to the pueblos along the Rio Grande and the villages in the mountains between Santa Fe and Taos. Although their stories converge in the outback of the American Southwest, the saga of Ladies of the Canyons is also the tale of Boston’s Brahmins, the Greenwich Village avant-garde, the birth of American modern art, and Santa Fe’s art and literary colony. Ladies of the Canyons is the story of New Women stepping boldly into the New World of inconspicuous success, ambitious failure, and the personal challenges experienced by women and men during the emergence of the Modern Age.

The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried PDF Author: Tim O'Brien
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0547420293
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.