The Experience of Women of My Generation in the Countryside during and after the Chinese Cultural Revolution

Nineteen sixty-six to nineteen seventy-six in China were years of political struggle and chaos. On our army reclamation farm productivity was impeded and halted regularly by meetings to denounce the so-called capitalist-roaders. 5 We often walked more than twenty miles to the regiment headquarters and sat there on the dusty ground for more than two hours listening to denunciations of the crimes of capitalist-roaders even though we did not know who they were. Those years were also years of artificially intensified class struggles. There was a now notorious slogan at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution: The son of a hero father is always a great man; a reactionary father produces nothing but a bastard! 6 This theory of blood relations was used by some in our group to discriminate against others as it was used everywhere in China. We too were divided into different class categories as reds greys and blacks 7 according to our family backgrounds. People would change their attitude towards others overnight because of their family backgrounds and it was normal in those years for everyone to know everyone elses background so as to form relationships. We were asked to establish a proletarian class consciousness 8 in our minds and to draw a line between ourselves and those who were from undesirable backgrounds. Thus friends could no longer be friends. (authors)

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