Mao's Hijacked Generation

<p><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Mao's Hijacked Generation</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>. Sarasota FL: New Knowledge Press 2024</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>According to Ai Weiwei the renowned Chinese artist and human rights activist [t]his rare book is a true record of the dark history...of the </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Zhiqing</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> Movement in China that destroyed rationality severed people's historical memory and rational thinking and deeply affected the way Chinese people think and behave today.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>During a span of seventeen years (1962 to 1979) close to eighteen million Chinese educated youth about one-half of an entire generation of literate teenagers from China's cities weresent off to remote places in the Chinese countryside sometimes for a decade or more to be re-educated and to learn from the peasants. Those young people are known in China as </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>zhiqing </em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>literally educated youth because of their origins as literate middle school graduates from Chinese cities and also known as Sent-Down Youth in English. The </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>zhiqing </em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>experience shaped the lives and consciousness of an entire generation of Chinese including China's president Xi Jinping among other current members of China's Politburo. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>The </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>zhiqing </em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>program was undoubtedly the largest compulsory population shift in human history which was carried out mainly to fulfill an ideological obsession of Mao Zedong. </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>This book includes personal accounts of </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>zhiqing </em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>departure arrival and return idealistic enthusiasm and abject disillusionment tales of life work broken families love and hate set in diverse rural locales from jungle villages in China's Southeast to grassland outposts in Mongolia from the banks of the Yellow River to the caves of Yan'an in China's Northeast. The stories narrate experiences of rape famine suicide madness true and false heroes career de- railment and career creation ideological idealism and ideological cynicism among others. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>This book is organized into three main parts. First is a Preface by Wang Youfen and a Foreword by Professor Michel Bonnin the leading historian of the </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>zhiqing </em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>program and experience. The second part is Wang Youfen's translations of the forty-two first-hand accounts of </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>zhiqing</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> experience edited by him and Robin Radin and organized under five topic headings including Life and Work; Relationships with Local People; Love Marriage and Family ;The Go-Home Campaign and Afterwards; and Confessions and Reflections. Third an historical background essay by Wang Youfen entitled China's Sent-Down Youth: Two Perspectives provides additional historical background information. Finally at the end of the book are profiles of the principal contributors including a fuller treatment of the life and career of Wang Youfen.</span></p><p><br></p>