On the Rural-Going M ovement

Narrator:Kong Dan

Compiler:Mi Hedu

On the Rural-Going M ovement

Narrator:Kong Dan

Compiler:Mi Hedu

The Rural-Going Movement of Urban Educated Youth,also called the Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement,is unprecedented and never to be duplicated.

T here was such a group--a group of people with great capabilities--in"Laosanjie" (referring to the junior and senior high school graduates of 1966~1968).How would the government have handled them if the normal education order had been restored?I wonder whether it was simply out of the consideration of employment.Or the authorities just thought:let's drive these trouble makers away to the remote countryside.

The Multifaceted Rural Life

The Rural-Going Movement was intended to solve economic problems?I can't tell it.In fact,our arrival literally brought about even heavier burden to the underdeveloped local rural productivity.

The number of the people sent to the countryside was over 17 million. They surely didn't produce as much added valueas 17millionpeople should have,did they?I don't even think they achieved anything that deserved the name of contribution.These villages still farmed as much land and harvestedasmanycropsasthey shouldhave.Withsuchasmall amount of resources,a natural villagewas inhabited by only about 200 people in total.When we went to live there,however,thepopulationincreased by 10%,with 22 more people. Take collecting firewood for example. When I just arrived there,one could collect firewood within a walking distance of five li(2.5 kilometres).However,by the time when I left,one had to walk for seven or eight li(3.5 or 4 kilometres)before they could find any firewood.Wasn't it an apparent resource plunder?The village got so many people coming,but got so little new added productivity.

Anyway,this has been a special and unique experience of our generation. Going and working in the rural and mountainous areas is also perceived by some as a character cultivation process for an individual youth.The Japanese once named Nei Weiping's chess style as"Cultural Revolution"style.While other players played in accordance with conventions,he wouldn't do the same,playing with no trace of conventions at all.He was just the man with great capabilities.Many Japanese superb players would have a headache wheneverencounteringhiminthe game,fearing his fierce and unyielding style as well as his weird and unexpected tricks.At any rate,Nie Weiping made a great contribution to China's three successive victories in the Sino-Japanese Go Challenge Cups.For many times,he turned the tide almost single-handedly during the competitions,thus successively occupied the position of the major player in the Chinese Team.With his undeniable contribution,Nie emerged to help restore China's position in the Go world.Can his such style be attributed to his experience in the Cultural Revolution and the six-year tough life in the countryside?

I myself can be another example. My experience in the countryside contributed significantly to my character, strong-mindedness,traits as well as my ability to communicate with ordinary people.In the past,we didn't have such communication:our bookish tone made it hard for them to communicate with us.

Although my life couldn't be counted as"superior,"as a child of a senior government official,I did have certain special contents in my life owing to my family background.A simple example was that my brother and I often wentwithourfathertoBeidaihe where he would go to work for a period of time every year.Ordinary people,of course,did not have such privilege.During the period of three-year hard time(1959-1961),we also had the experience of eating such food as sweet potato flour,atriplex,and flos sophorae,but we were never the most distressed group at that time.Even during the"Cultural Revolution"period when some of my family members were imprisoned or died,I still received a living allowance of 15 yuan and could sometimes buy myself some nicerfoodsuchasfriednoodles. Therefore,the worst hard time in my whole life was when I was living in the countryside.

Living with these countrymen,one could visually see the inequality of life and fate.This became especially evident to me when I left North Shanxi: they would stay on this land for ever. Here,a farmer lived all his life expecting to get enough to eat,marry a wife, get a baby born,and earn himself a coffin.Such was the content of his whole life.They had a short life expectancy due to the tough circumstances.Their life belief,which they told me directly,was that they lived all their lives just the way a poor man lives his life.Their happiness and their sorrow were bounded within this small area.You could even feel from their songs that they were just living in such an environment.This inequality has always been what we must face and improve even today.

When we went down to rural areas, we were faced with such a group ofpeople who lived at the very bottom of the society and probably endured the most and worst suffering.This is the most valuable acquisition of this experience:the knowledge of the people, the knowledge of China's reality.This knowledge can't be acquired easily. From today's perspective,all people should emigrate from the rural area where I went down to.Their way of living is not good for the people,ecol ogy,or environment.Serious soil erosionscrapedvegetationfromthe mountains,turning them into barren loess covered by no plants,and sheep grazing worsens the situation.One example is Shao Lin(a shrub forest).It started to retreat when I left.

Youth Without Romance

In North Shanxi,many young city girls couldn't bear the hardship during that period of time.There was such one in the village where I lived.She married alocalman.Why?Theyreally couldn't bear the tough life.

Every day,we went back and forth between our working place and home by climbing about four kilometres up and another four kilometres down the mountain.How did we eat our meals in the mountain?With our hands sticky from wheat and sheep gung,we rubbed our hands with some water which we sipped and spat to the hands.Then,with these hands,we grabbed the cold and sour cornballs and ate them.Even so,we could hardly get sufficient food.

Later,some people asked me,"How could things be like this?"

"Why couldn't things be like this?" was my reply.

This was exactly how farmers in North Shanxi lived their lives.When one was living at the very bottom with very limited living space,even revolutionaryromanticismcouldn'thelp solve any problem during that period of hard time.I just tried my best to obtain knowledge.

Our study at that time was in fact divorced from our life reality.After getting off work at dusk and having our supper,we could arrange the rest time of the evening.No matter it got dark early or late,no matter it was winter or summer,there were forever a few people sitting and reading in our cave dwelling.

We were not as ambitious as those revolutionists who were determined to devote themselves to the transformation of our society and country.No. We just felt the reading was a natural need for us.

When living in the countryside,I did read some books.I read all the books I could find,including yellow-coverbooksofliteratureand grey-cover books of politics.Some examples areA Critical Biography of Trotsky,andThe New Class,written by Djilas.I became a post-graduate student at the age of 31.I did not get undergraduate education,which was a deficiency in my life.

After the broadcast of the TV series Crimson Romance,some young people said to me,"Hey,Mr.Kong,we all envy you guys,seeing what a romantic life you were living at that time."

I replied,"It's really a little nonsense."To me,they are literally naive kids who regard going to work in the rural villages as roaming around.

Today,some people are studying this period of history.Then,can we attribute the unique characteristics of this generation,which is greatly different from other generations,to the Rural-Going Movement?Some of these differences are positive,but are there any negative ones?Are the negative ones only limited to some people individually,or are they applied to the whole society?

Going and working in the countryside and mountainous areas has been a miserable experience for many people. With the normal course of their life being disrupted,their whole life was changed as well.If these negative factors couldn't turn into positives ones undercertaincircumstances,they would inevitably become your burden and affect your life.

For instance,a group of kids who were born into the family of the city youths and the local villagers went to Shanghai to seek roots.That was really a pitiful sight.There were many similar cases in North Shanxi as well. Some youths married the local villagers.Some of them had children, and some got a divorce later.

However,"Thousands of urban educated youths went to rural and frontier areas where they were tempered and exposed to productive practice and theircompetencewerereinforced. They made a contribution to the development and prosperity of our country's underdeveloped areas.Later,some of them grew into great talents in the national construction."As recorded in History of the Communist Party of China Vol.2.

(FromReservingNaturalQualities, SDX Joint Publishing.Translation:Liu Liqin.Illustration:Shen Yaoyi)