REVOLUTION,

RESISTANCE,

AND REFORM

IN VILLAGE CHINA

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REVOLUTION,

RESISTANCE,

AND REFORM

IN VILLAGE CHINA

Edward Friedman

Paul G. Pickowicz

Mark Selden

Yale University Press

New Haven and London

Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Philip

Hamilton McMillan of the Class of , Yale College.

Copyright by Yale University.

All rights reserved.

This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in

any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections and of the U.S.

Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written

permission from the publishers.

Set in Galliard type by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Friedman, Edward,

Revolution, resistance, and reform in village China / Edward Friedman, Paul G.

Pickowicz, and Mark Selden.

p. cm. (Yale agrarian studies series)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

isbn --- (cloth : alk. paper)

. Hebei Sheng (China)Rural conditions. . ChinaRural conditions.

. Communism and agricultureChinaHebei Sheng. . Government,

Resistance toChinaHebei Sheng. . ChinaPolitics and government

I. Pickowicz, Paul. II. Selden, Mark. III. Title. IV. Yale agrarian studies.

hn.hf

.%%dc

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the

Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on

Library Resources.

For my mentors, Barrington Moore Jr. and Herman Epstein (EF)For Li Huai (PGP)For my mentors, Leo Marx and Mary C. Wright (MS)

vii

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments / ix

Prelude /

Back from the Brink /

Memory and Myth /

Socialist Education /

A Whi /

Riding High /

The Stench /

Whatever Chairman Mao Says /

War Communism /

Sprouts of Reform /

Stalemate /

Tremors /

Earthquakes /

Reform /

Reform and Its Discontents /

Appendix of Tables /

List of Abbreviations /

Notes /

Index /

ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A project spanning a quarter of a century and extending from across theUnited States to China, Hong Kong, and beyond entails the accumulation oflarge personal debts.

We have been fortunate in having the guidance, suggestions and support offaculty and graduate student colleagues, including Jeremy Brown, UradynBulag, Anita Chan, Joseph Esherick, Feng Chongyi, David Goodman, PeterHo, Li Huai, Liu Dong, Liu Yigao, Lu Aiguo, Roderick MacFarquhar, Rich-ard Madsen, Elizabeth Perry, Stanley Rosen, Michael Schoenhals, James Scott,Tao Heshan, Jonathan Unger, Andrew Walder, Wang Liping, Xiao Zhiwei,Yang Yanshu, and Zhang Xianwen.

Thomas Bernstein and an anonymous reader for the Press twice providedperceptive critical readings of the manuscript. We thank them for pulling nopunches, and we fully credit their contributions to delaying publication of awork that was already long overdue.

We particularly express our appreciation to Cheng Tiejun, native of Rao-yang county, Ph.D. in sociology, specialist on Chinas countryside, professorof social science at the University of Macau, and author of two forthcomingbooks on Macau society, for his wise counsel over many years.

Others who assisted in our research are Cai Dongqing, Chen Peiqi, ChenShidong, Bestor Cram, Luo Lin, Sue Williams, Han Peng, Natasha Pic-kowicz, Ruan Ruoshan, Ed Settles, Shih Chi-lin, Sarah Smith, Judith Vec-chioni, Wang Zhiqiang, Yang Xiaowen, Yu Shaohua, and Zhao Zhida.

We thank the University of Wisconsin-Madison Cartographic Laboratoryand Marieka Brouwer for the preparation of the maps.

We have been the beneciaries of the dedicated professionalism of sta atour three universities, including Donna Andrews, Susan Brenneke, AngelaFinnerty, Betty Gunderson, Lisa Rhodes, Alexandra Ruiz, Susan Taniguchi,and especially Nancy Hall and Diane Morauske, who typed and retyped draftsof the manuscript over many years.

Binghamton University, the University of California, San Diego, and theUniversity of Wisconsin, Madison, supported our work over the decades,making possible more than trips to Raoyang and China that providedmuch of the information for this study. We thank the National Endowment

x A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

for the Humanities for a research grant that facilitated our research and accel-erated the writing.

Our deepest debts are to the people of Wugong, Raoyang, Hengshui, andHebei whose words and deeds are recorded here, and who shared with ustheir knowledge, hopes, and dreams for the future of their families, lineages,and neighborhoods.

PRELUDE

This book explores an epoch of clashes between forces of rural revo-lution and reform from Chinas Great Leap Forward at the end of thes through the Cultural Revolution to the new millennium. Ourstudy centers on Wugong, a North China plain village milessouth of Beijing in Raoyang county, Hebei province. We locate thatvillage in a matrix of power relations and resource conicts spanningcounty, province, region, and center, examining contrasting andintertwined experiences of communities that enjoyed none of Wu-gongs benets as a state-endowed model village.

Together with our earlier volume, Chinese Village, Socialist State,this study reveals the centrality of model villages in Chinese ruraldevelopment of the Mao era. Models were vanguards in a strategy ofpolitical theater and resource allocation that emphasized politicalmobilization and self-reliance. Their roles would change, but notdisappear, in a subsequent era of market-oriented reform. Revolution,Resistance, and Reform in Village China also oers new perspectiveson hierarchy, power, welfare, and structures of inequality in succes-sive epochs of revolution and reform in Chinas countryside. To-gether, the two books introduce three generations of villagers, theirexperiences, their hopes, their fears, and their engagements withstate, collective, and community.

In contrast to numerous anthropologically inected studies thatpresent village communities as isolated microcosms, we pay closeattention to the political, military, and cultural networks that shapedthe lives of villagers and are shaped in turn by the values and actions ofvillagers. This book shows, too, the ways in which successive politicalcampaigns, such as the four cleanups, the Cultural Revolution, thefour goods, the campaign to criticize Lin Biao and Confucius, andcampaigns to learn from Dazhai reverberated through village China.We explore not only the profound consequences for local people ofpolitical campaigns but also the ways in which locals sometimes ap-propriated campaigns and used them for their own purposes.

In the late Mao era, while little noted by international observers,signs of rural social discontent were legion. They pervaded the mock-

P R E L U D E

ing rhythms of shunkouliu (slippery jingles that circulated throughout thecountryside by word of mouth) in which the rural poor, the powerless, protes-tors, and pariahs oered pungent opinions on the privileges of the powerful.During the Great Leap famine of the early s, villagers raged at a corruptsystem that forced people to pander to power to survive: Flatter shame-lesslyeat delicacies and drink hot stu. Dont atterstarve to death forsure. At critical moments, intra- and intervillage clashes erupted, sometimesspilling over into violence. Violence peaked throughout the countryside dur-ing the Cultural Revolution. Armed factional struggle, with militia tied tomilitary units, soared when the leadership fragmented, particularly in the years. These struggles constituted critical forms of resistance to the partycenter or to regional or local authorities.

Most often, however, resistance took indirect, at times even invisible forms.Villagers long remembered the throng from Gaoqiao village, north of Wu-gong, that marched to the township headquarters in as famine loomed,demanding grain. One hungry villager, Zhou Minchao, carried a lit lantern tohelp leaders see the pain of the people. Zhou was jailed as a new class enemyand a foe of socialism. In poorer villages, young men tried, often at great risk,to beat the command economy by turning to the household and the market tond some way to earn money. Villagers maneuvered to protect themselves aspolicy torrents cascaded down, promoted by ocials whose careers hinged oncampaign achievements that frequently outed local preferences, culturalvalues, and consumption needs. Ocial pronouncements articulating a revo-lutionary fundamentalism could carry deadly consequences. Many villagersquietly subverted the revolutions war against locally meaningful ways of mar-rying, celebrating the New Year, and mourning. Others joined illegal religioussects rooted in Buddhist or heterodox millennial traditions.

The Wugong resident who most eloquently articulated the plight of vil-lagers was Geng Xiufeng. A lifelong enthusiast of socialism, he returned to hishome village in the early s. Once known as the Collectomaniac, in thecourse of four decades he recorded a litany of criticisms of the failure of theCommunist Party to deliver on the central promise of assuring mutual pros-perity. Xiufeng criticized and opposed, at times openly, practices that sacri-ced villagers to the interests of brutal and corrupt ocials.

In Xiufeng had initiated a four-family coop that caught the attentionof local wartime resistance leader Lin Tie, who eventually became Hebeisprovincial rst party secretary and Wugongs patron. The successful coopallowed higher ocials to present the village as showing the way to socialism.Coop leader Geng Changsuo, Xiufengs kinsman, won national fame for turn-ing the original four-family coop into a villagewide unit in the early s.That story is told in Chinese Village, Socialist State, which chronicled Wugongsrise as a market-oriented coop in the s and as a mechanized collective inthe mid-s, ending with the Great Leap from to . Revolution,

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P R E L U D E

Resistance, and Reform in Village China continues the story from the Leapfamine in the period through the traumatic upheavals of the Cul-tural Revolution to post-Mao reforms that both enriched the countryside andgave rise to jarring inequalities.

Wugong was not simply a better-o village in Raoyang county, situated inthe chronic grain decit province of Hebei that surrounded the great cities ofBeijing and Tianjin. Because Geng Changsuos village was promoted byHebei party secretary Lin Tie, a member of the political network of Beijingmayor and Politburo member Peng Zhen, the careers of county, prefectural,and provincial ocials were intertwined with the fortunes of Geng Changsuo,Lin Tie, Peng Zhen, and ultimately President Liu Shaoqi. The ability of localleaders to maneuver was sorely tested by the vicissitudes of Chinese politics.The book details how the fate of peripheral villagers, both those in modelvillages and in less favored communities, was intertwined with that of higherparty, military, and state leaders.

Wugongs early promoter, Lin Tie, had not been alone in backing thevillage. As Wugong gained prominence, groups tied to such revolutionaryfundamentalists at the state center as theorist Chen Boda, who had praisedWugong as early as and again in the collectivization drive, alsosought leverage by linking up with the village. Indeed, every major leader witha stake in the North China countryside bid for Wugongs favor and sought toshape Wugong in his preferred image. These included Liu Zihou, who wouldsucceed Lin Tie as Hebei rst party secretary, Li Xuefeng, who headed theNorth China Bureau, and Chen Yonggui, Chinas leading model peasant, whowould eventually rise to become vice premier. Each group highlighted qual-ities that made the village a model from that groups perspective. Wugongreshaped the villages historical narrative with each lurch in the party line andthe requirements of successive patrons. To retain model status required agilityin adapting to the priorities of momentarily victorious power holders at local,regional, and national levels while maintaining a support base in the village.

Most villages lacked Wugongs pipeline to state resources. When anti-market collectivism and state strictures that prevented labor migration trappedvillagers in stagnant misery in the aftermath of the Leap famine, many poorervillagers, at times with the support of local ocials, turned to market, mobility,money, and maneuver to survive. This book details repeated clashes, covertand overt, between villagers and the ruling party over successive revolutionaryand reformist policies. It examines lineage and religion, which persisted in theface of revolutionary campaigns that branded them as feudal. It highlights thewide-ranging and sometimes violent role of the military, legitimated by popu-lar patriotism, reaching across the countryside and penetrating the villagesthrough the militia. It traces repeated eorts by disgruntled villagers to im-prove their livelihood by breaking through state controls on household pro-duction and the market. Indeed, we show the consequences of pressures from

P R E L U D E

below for market-oriented reform in the early s and early s, longbefore Maos death and the triumph of a reform agenda at the center.

In the reform era, patriotism would persist, while lineage and religionwould move out of the shadows to assume powerful visible manifestations inlocal communities and reshape grassroots politics. With the rise of DengXiaoping in the late s, a reform agenda directly challenged the collectivesystem that had restricted market activity and locked villagers within localcommunities. New forms of social and economic organization then spurredeconomic growth and a more relaxed political climate. But reform also gaverise to new kinds of social inequality and ocial corruption that among someproduced nostalgia for bygone days.

This book draws on eld research involving more than research visits toWugong village and Raoyang county dating back to . These visits made itpossible to re-interview informants and family members on numerous occa-sions in the wake of changing policies and outcomes, and armed with informa-tion derived from print and interview sources. To chart evolving village-staterelationships, we have made use of a wide array of print sources and infor-mants tapped both throughout China and abroad. Examples include access tosix volumes on Wugong village published in China over the years since ,the complete run of the Hebei Daily since , and sporadic access to theHengshui Daily, the prefectural newspaper. The various unpublished, hand-written memoirs and protest letters compiled by Geng Xiufeng provided agold mine of vivid, critical, no-holds-barred writing, assessing village historyand party policies from the original four-household coop of , by anobserver who was resident in Wugong for nearly four decades until his deathin . Interviews with former political prisoners who served time in Rao-yang county, in the Hebei capital, Shijiazhuang, and in Beijing provided an-other birds-eye view of local life. So too did interviews with intellectuals,artists, historians, writers, work team leaders, and university faculty who weresent to Wugong for periods of weeks or months to several years. Followingour practice in Chinese Village, Socialist State, information obtained from inter-viewees and condential sources are not cited in the notes.

Dynamics of revolution, resistance, and reform were played out with re-gional variations throughout village China over the long twentieth centurythat is the subject of our two volumes. Bringing villagers in their rich specic-ity into the pages of history and attending both to their agency in the historicalprocess and state attempts to curb their autonomy, we try to put a human faceon conicts that punctuated rural life. In the reform era, as earlier, villagersoer alternative, value-based understandings of Chinas future. Now, as ear-lier, the success of villager initiatives rests in part on nding support in theranks of sympathetic ocials and intellectuals. Comprehending the complexhuman agency of villagers in a centralized authoritarian China is a major goalof this study.

BACK

FROM THE

BRINK

The calamities of the Leap initiated in spread alienation. But thedesperation of villagers rarely caused ocials to question whether theparty dictatorship could achieve revolutionary goals. Party leadershad lost touch with policies that had won the allegiance of patriotsand the poor during the resistance war against Japan.In contrast to Jacobins and Bolsheviks, who attacked the market,thereby harming villagers, from the late s to the early sChinas communists achieved a nearly silent revolution by combininglimited redistributive policies with freeing the market and permit-ting money lending, land rentals, and the employment of hired la-bor. Economically rational policies, resting on a mixed economyincorporating family farms and small-scale mutual aid, reduced pov-erty and inequality and expanded the number of owner-cultivatorhouseholds.

The institutions and policies that were imported from StalinsSoviet Union and then intensied in the Great Leap to promoterevolution had, by contrast, plunged the nation into famine. Com-mitted to a communism dened by the negation of the bourgeoisieand the extirpation of money, property, and markets, the late Maocame to view the successes of the period as courting thedanger of normalizing bourgeois evil. Nevertheless, as Lenin turnedin the s to the New Economic Policy to end the famine causedby war-communism policies, so, in the wake of the Leap famine,Mao expediently accepted reform to get through the crisis.

Chaos

At the nadir of famine, central and provincial governments wereparalyzed. In , with mortality soaring, the state actually ex-ported times more grain than it imported. To make matters

B A C K F R O M T H E B R I N K

worse, in early Mao pushed for a renewed Great Leap, thereby intensify-ing the disaster.

Administrative chaos hampered recovery. In December , the Hebeiprovincial government had dissolved Raoyang county as an administrativeentity. Its four gigantic units of nearly villages each, dubbed communes(Red Star, Red Flag, Red Light, and Iron and Steel), were grafted onto anenlarged Xianxian county to the east. Wugong, which had long cultivatedcontacts in Raoyang town, had to deal with an unfamiliar Xianxian, a RomanCatholic stronghold. Then, in April , three of the former Raoyang com-munes, including Wugongs, were reassigned to an expanded Shenxian countyto the south. One year later, in April , the four communes were reallo-cated to Anping county to the west. Village leaders hardly knew where to turnto defend local interests.

County-level disarray was exacerbated by reorganization of the prefecture,the next highest rung of state power. In March Raoyang was shiftedfrom Shijiazhuang prefecture to the west to Cangxian prefecture to the east.Three months later it was placed under Tianjin prefecture to the northeast. InDecember Raoyang came under the control of a greatly expanded Tian-jin municipality. Between April and April Raoyang was admin-istered once again by Shijiazhuang prefecture. In short, from to Raoyang was administered by ve dierent prefectures.

Not every administrative change resulted from revolutionary giantism.Hebei party chief Lin Ties lobbying got the Hebei provincial capital moved toTianjin in . Baoding was unsuitable as a capital, Lin found, because itlacked industry. Baoding promoted an agrarian socialism in which industrial-ization was not a prerequisite for socialism. By contrast, Lin wanted metro-politan Tianjins industry and its educational and cultural resources to helpmodernize the countryside. In , after the Eighth Party Congress putmodernization high on the political agenda, Lin asked Premier Zhou Enlai toapprove moving the Hebei capital to Tianjin. Zhou arranged for Lin to putthe idea to Mao Zedong. During meetings in Hangzhou and Shanghai, Linchased after Mao, nally securing his assent. In the Hebei capital movedto Tianjin in line with Premier Zhous and Lin Ties modernization policies,which were immediately undermined by the revolutionary Leap.

Hunger

Although model Wugong village remained a privileged place, it disappearedfrom party propaganda when Geng Changsuo resisted pressures grossly toinate Leap-era yield claims. Liu Zihou, who assumed the governorship ofHebei in April , had personally pressed the agricultural labor model tosend up ve production satellites, that is, to proclaim stratospheric output

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B A C K F R O M T H E B R I N K

gures for ve dierent crops. When the -year-old Geng diplomatically de-clined, Governor Liu dropped Wugong as a model. The promethean outputsreported by other villages better served the governors propaganda purposes.

Wugong commune was similarly pressured. In fall , commune partysecretary Yin Yubo searched for a sorghum satellite. Some elds in Wangqiaoand Wodi villages looked pretty good, he said. If there was not enough inthose elds, grain could be moved in from other elds. No one would know.But his sta balked, and Yin scuttled the plan. That winter Yin called for acabbage satellite. Ocials were urged to bring enough cabbages together in asingle eld to substantiate a claim for yields of , catties per mu. (A muis one-sixth of an acre.) When an aide protested, Yin exploded, If Im a fake,then whos real? In Anguo county a mu of wheat is getting more than ,catties. Is that real? Xinli village in Tianjin is getting , catties of rice. Isthat real? Theyre all fake. (A catty is . pounds.) Yin reluctantly abandonedthe cabbage satellite.

Commune ocials did not resist a provincial agricultural ocial in fall. Having estimated yields at catties per mu, they were aghast whenthe high-ranking visitor projected yields of catties. Zhang Fengbin, re-sponsible for the commune budget, screamed on hearing the bloated estimate.Are we going to leave the common people any grain at all? Since taxes andcompulsory sales to the state at low xed prices were levied as a percentage ofyield, the inated number pumped up the communes grain requisition quotafrom four to eleven million catties. Commune budget chief Zhang protestedto no avail at a meeting in Xianxian, Wugongs new county seat.

In late fall Wugong commune turned over four million catties, andthen another ve million. Still, the phone kept ringing with demands for twomillion catties more. Arent you still for socialism? the callers asked. Recentlyappointed commune party secretary Chai Rui delivered the grain. In Janu-ary , when Raoyang was restored as a county, Chai was named countymagistrate.

When news of the high grain requisitions spread, an old-timer fumed.Whos kidding whom? During the war we helped you guys make it through.We took care of your food and clothing. But you havent paid us back. Thewe of the anti-Japanese resistance was turning into us against them.Villagers regarded the requisitions as theft.

As household grain reserves disappeared in late fall , villagers resisted.No one came to meetings. Angry about low state prices, tillers abandoned thecotton elds. Draft animals died of hunger. Stillborn piglets were thrownaway. Plowing for the winter wheat crop was half-hearted at best. Villagersgrumbled that the destructive power of those above was greater than the atombomb. Some muttered that ocials were greedier than the old class enemiesand counterrevolutionaries.

By spring many villagers were too weak to prepare the land for

B A C K F R O M T H E B R I N K

planting. In Wugong communes Dongsongjia village, famished people laydown in the elds and refused to work. Commune budget chief Zhangshouted angrily, Get up and work! One victim responded, How can wework on an empty stomach? To intimidate him, Zhang demanded, What isyour class status? Intentionally misunderstanding the query, which in thelocal argot sounds a bit like What do you use to carry shit? the protestorresponded, I use a basket to carry shit! Zhang stalked away.

Lower-level ocials in Raoyang who hid grain from the state and dis-tributed it to villagers during the Great Leap famine of the early s werejailed. Villagers vividly remembered He Shouchen from a community justwest of Wugong, who put up a poster during the dearth saying:

Grain is as scarce as beans made of gold;The state gives the word and we have to fold.They squeeze out our grain from the east to the west;It feels like theyre cutting the esh from my chest.

The states grain-requisition work team branded the incident a counter-revolutionary action. Before activists could organize a public struggle meet-ing against him, He Shouchen caved in, posting a nal political poem:

Poster, poster on the wall:A sword to make the dragon fall?A modern rocket to pierce the pall?No. The work team doesnt forgive,And the masses wont live and let live.So there!Placard, placard on the tree,No more posters for me!

Commune ocials estimated that villagers needed two million catties ofgrain to survive to the next harvest. Commune party secretary Chai Rui pe-titioned Shenxian county. He secured , catties. Later deliveries of, and , catties barely got villagers through to the June wheat harvest.

That summer, rains brought water logging. Corn, millet, sorghum, andpeanuts rotted. In Wugong commune , mu of crops were destroyed.Shenxian county then cut grain rations to but seven ounces a day, starvationrations. One old man protested to a commune ocial, I thought that when Igot old I would see the richness of socialism. Who could imagine that lifewould be worse than before? With household grain supplies depleted andrations low, villagers with precious cash sought black markets. Ocials pre-tended not to see. Prices in the black market soared. In corn was threeyuan a catty, wheat ve yuan a catty, more than times the state purchasingprice, and eggs were . yuan each. One local ocial estimated that Wugong

B A C K F R O M T H E B R I N K

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B A C K F R O M T H E B R I N K

commune, whose deaths in were twice those of a normal year, was farbetter o than most.

Commune-level salaried employees, including workers in collective enter-prises not entitled to state grain rations, found their pay too little for black-market prices. In the Wugong commune machine-repair shop, eight workersquit. Once sinecures, such jobs no longer provided a living wage.

Shenxian county authorities informed Shijiazhuang prefecture in fall that many had starved to death in Duzhuang and Ningjin villages. Theprefecture blamed subordinates. Local leaders were ordered to oppose theve winds of exaggeration (fukua), communism (gongchan), ocial priv-ilege (ganbu teshu), issuing blind commands (xia zhihui), and resorting toforce (qiangpo mingling). Ocials were told to smash walnuts (za hetao),that is, to target small fry, to nd county, commune, and brigade ocials toblame for famine deaths. A Shenxian county party vice secretary singled out asa struggle target committed suicide.

The campaign to smash walnuts peaked in late when higher authori-ties scapegoated village ocials. Wugong village party secretary Zhang Duan,known as the Ox, erupted when told he should not have blindly obeyed.We have to obey the commands of our superiors, Zhang proclaimed. It iswrong to tell us to oppose the party!

The prefecture ordered villages to run struggle meetings. In Wugong com-mune the eort was half-hearted. Party secretary Hou of hapless Yangge-zhuang, just north of Wugong, and the village head of Xichangbo, east ofWugong, were the two leading targets. They were corrupt and incompetent,but everyone knew the devastation was not their fault.

While other localities were far harder hit, in Wugong communemembers ate wild grass and ground corn cobs mixed with a bit of corn our,a fodder normally reserved for pigs. Bellies swelled, and people got sick.Chronic constipation was so severe that villagers inserted their ngers intotheir rectums to extract rock-hard feces.

In fall provincial party secretary Lin Tie sent Hu Kaiming to Zhang-jiakou in Hebeis northwest. Hu ended policies that brought famine andrestored ocials who had resisted those policies. The prestige of WugongsGeng Changsuo rose in Tianjin, the provincial capital, because he had resistedthe murderous winds of the Leap. Lin Ties allies, who had opposed Leapexcesses, praised Geng for trying to report something close to actual grainproduction.

By late malnutrition and edema so weakened Geng that one armhung uselessly at his side. He was cared for in the bare-bones commune clinic,where he was joined by commune ocials Xu Xiangqian and Geng Xiufeng.The three were fed a bland famine recipe of kangtangmian, made of ne cha,some noodles, and a bit of sugar, food not available to others. The three agreedthat villagers were poorer than ever and that the system forcing silent obe-

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dience to irrational orders was responsible. They decided to send a letter tohigher ocials.

The letter, dated December , , said that output in Wugong com-mune was down percent in and that there was not enough food, fuel,and fodder. More than head of livestock had died, crops had been sown ininappropriate locations, and too much grain had been requisitioned. Theyurged recruitment of ocials who would seek truth from facts, that is, peoplewho would plant crops in suitable places and report yields accurately. Second,units should devise a rational requisition contract based on normal output,rather than on-the-spot estimates by visiting higher-ups. Wugong had pi-oneered such a contract system in the precollectivization s. Third, author-ities should stimulate trade and allow livestock to carry collective goods acrosscounty lines as had been the policy before the annihilation of the market.

Geng Xiufeng went to commune headquarters to ax an ocial seal to theletter. A deputy commune secretary warned, To write a letter to the center isno joke; the advantages are few, the disadvantages many. The deputy warnedXiufeng, I cant make such a big decision myself. In truth, if he [communeparty secretary Chai Rui] was here, he wouldnt agree. If you insist on goingahead, just sign your own names! The two Gengs then signed the letter,sending copies to the provincial government, to Tianjin municipality, and toTan Zhenlin, the top party agricultural ocial in Beijing.

On his return, Chai exploded. You sent a letter to the center?! Are youcrazy?! Chai turned on Geng Xiufeng. It wasnt enough that you signedyourself; you had to drag Changsuo along. Hes a red ag in this province. Ifyou make a mistake, it doesnt matter; but if you cause Changsuo to make amistake, that will be the end of the red ag! To Geng Xiufeng, it was astruggle for Changsuos soul between those who knew the real needs of localpeople and those who knew little and cared less about villagers.

Tan Zhenlins oce in Beijing responded to the letter. Although Hebei grainyields had fallen each year since , Politburo member Tan reminded localocials that the province had promised to supply the grain needs of metro-politan Tianjin within three years and of Beijing within ve. The state neededthe grain for urban dwellers. Tan urged the commune to experiment withrequisition contracts. This would commit the collective to reasonable deliveriesto the state and protect villagers against sudden demands for more grain. If thereform worked, others could implement it. But the state requisition of grainstood. With Beijing and Tianjin in dire straits in December , the centralgovernment told the provinces to do whatever it took to fulll grain quotas.

Reform

In July and August , the center nally called a halt to the Leap. In Octo-ber it increased grain imports. In November it allowed greater decentralization,

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restored household plots and markets, stressed labor incentives, and called forincreased income for villagers but retained public dining halls. By spring rural leaders had a freer hand to stimulate the devastated economy. In March President Liu Shaoqi, Premier Zhou, Party General Secretary DengXiaoping, and Politburo Standing Committee member and economic special-ist Chen Yun convened a North China Conference to nd a way out, whileChairman Mao met with ocials from the southern region to assess theagrarian situation. Mao approved a short-term recovery program thatstressed material incentives.

In May central leaders fanned out to gauge the crisis. Deng Xiaopingand Beijing party secretary Peng Zhen went to suburban Beijing, and PremierZhou visited Handan county, south of Wugong commune, where even driedpotatoes seemed a delicacy. Talks with local leaders and villagers convincedZhou that the public dining halls exacerbated hunger and demoralization. His a.m. phone call to Mao on May , , is said to have been critical inconvincing the chairman to abolish the mess halls. In June , collectivemess halls were dropped.

In and the center reduced the burden on rural producers. Com-pulsory grain quotas were sharply cut and the agricultural tax lowered. Insummer prices paid to villagers for grain delivered to the state rose percent, with similar increases for pigs and chickens.

Reforms also reduced the size of rural production units and transferredauthority to the production team. Teams, cut to approximately to households, replaced giant entities as the basic agricultural labor and account-ing units. To curb the waste of the Leap, investment was capped at to percent of total income, welfare at to percent. Households retained moregrain.

With hungry villagers resisting economic irrationality, the state toleratedhousehold economic initiatives that recently had been crushed. Team leaderscould again set aside to percent of collective land for strictly householdcultivation, thus restoring some family plots. Villagers were also encouragedto plant food around their homes and on waste land and to raise pigs andchickens. These goods could again be exchanged in markets. Yesterdays coun-terrevolutionary crime was todays life-enhancing reform.

In some places, farmers and local ocials promoted virtual decollectiviza-tion. In Anhui and Sichuan, provincial leaders allowed household respon-sibility systems (zeren zhi) that redistributed collective lands to households.They had to meet state quotas, but otherwise could respond to marketdemand.

Boss Geng and Wugong commune secretary Chai Rui applauded the sharpcutback in state grain requisitions, the reduction in agricultural taxes, and theincrease in state purchasing prices for grain. They supported decentralizationto the brigade (village) and team levels. They also endorsed the states tripling

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of the percentage of budget outlays for rural projects in when expendi-tures for rural development reached the highest levels of the Peoples Re-public, percent.

The reforms forced down black-market prices. Grain prices in Raoyang fellby ve-sixths to . yuan per catty for wheat in and to . yuan per cattythe following year. The economy rebounded, and famine eased as a result ofreform. Wugongs revolutionary leadership remained wary, however, of re-form proposals that turned away from the collective.

Resisting Reform

During the lunar New Year, Geng Changsuo, just home from the clinic,heeded party behests to relegitimate socialism by telling youth of the bad olddays, recounting the blessings of revolution. Geng said that the collective roadguaranteed Wugong a bright future. It was how the village rst won theattention of upper levels to become a richly rewarded model. Clean Geng hadlocal credibility not only because he lived simply, taking last and least, but alsobecause Xu Shukuan, his bound-foot wife, known as the Tigress because shesnapped at people who shirked collective work, toiled until she returned homein the evening to soothe the pain of her palpitating feet in a basin of warmwater. In many communities, villagers hated corrupt and unaccountable lead-ers who dined sumptuously, preferentially rewarded friends and family, orbuilt new homes while nonocials lived in hovels and went hungry.

The county, acting on reform directives, ended the giantism of the com-munes. Three of the four original Raoyang communes split into twelve smallerones based on the former township, averaging thirteen villages and partymembers. A modicum of historic familiarity reduced alienation. But Wugongcommune resisted, hewing to the Leaps giantism. It preserved a unit of villages until April .

In May a North China Agricultural Conference was chaired byZhang Kerang, a longtime Hebei provincial patron of the original Wugongcoop and an ally of Hebei party secretary Lin Tie. Zhang worked in the partysRural Work Department. The conference recommended nationwide experi-mentation with contracts to small groups of households or even single house-holds. The idea was promoted by Zhangs boss, Deng Zihui, who headed theRural Work Department. Deng had opposed premature collectivization. Fol-lowing the conference, Anping county, Wugongs latest administrative home,urged commune and village leaders to expand household plots borrowed byvillagers as land to save lives. Wugong commune and village leaders, how-ever, rejected this reform, insisting that expanding the household sector wouldweaken the revolutionary models collective foundation.

In summer Shijiazhuang prefecture sought to rein in commune-levelcommandism. It called on local ocials to dismount from the horse and

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reduce state-tethered collective activity. Again, Wugong commune resisted.While acknowledging that some communes had built useless enterprises dur-ing the Leap, Wugong leaders held that closing its collective enterprises wouldbe like cutting o ones queue just to cool o a bit. Some suggested circum-venting the directive by turning the communes productive brick factory overto Wugong village to enhance the economy of the regions red ag. Othersproposed breaking up the communes transportation team, giving one of itstwo trucks to Wugong and allowing several villages to share the other. No onewanted to disband the communes machine-repair shop.

Despite Wugongs coolness to reform, the Anping county leadership pro-moted the village as an experimental site for a grain-distribution reform de-signed to oer material incentives. The villages fame was a magnet attractingresources. During the fall harvest, county deputy secretary Du visitedand declared, Wugong is a red ag in this province. Therefore the countydecided to start here. Your experience will spread to the whole county! Gengbalked. Du stated that reform was a party decision; no party member couldoppose it.

All other commune villages distributed grain entirely according to labor.Wugong alone parceled out just percent according to labor, the remainderper capita. Soon after Du departed, the other commune villages embracedWugongs leveling - formula.

Higher levels continued to press reform. Hebeis provincial party commit-tee stipulated that the appropriate size of a production team was house-holds. Accordingly, a work team led by headmaster Qi of the provincial partyschool went to Wugong. The brigade (village) was divided into three teams.Teams and in the east and center village had about households each,and team in the west had . Each was about the size of whole villages inmany regions. Village ocials would not break up Wugongs three large teamsdespite Qis insistence that teams of more than households violated theregulations of the provincial party committee.

Qi called a village meeting. A minority, later labeled antisocialist rich peas-ants, broke with Geng and backed the provincial directives. But team ocialsand most villagers supported Gengs opposition to breaking up the largeunits. Defeated, Headmaster Qis provincial work team left.

Wugong did implement reforms to allow villagers once again to growvegetables and raise domestic animals in home courtyards for household con-sumption. Wugong called its bookkeeping system democratic accounting.The numbers were open to scrutiny. But leaders hectored villagers seekingcash earnings in the market.

In line with reforms proposed by Deng Zihuis Rural Work Department,some in central Hebei tried out a system of responsibility lands. Householdscontracted to meet state grain quotas. After fullling a quota, tillers could sellor consume the balance. Geng, however, opposed responsibility lands, con-

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tending that household farming would turn too many into paupers on smallstrips of land and squander investments in tractors and mechanized wells.

In and agriculture recovered. The market also came back to life.Locally made Zhanggang wine, which had disappeared in the early swhen the state took command of the economy, reappeared to the delightof older men, who found the -proof Hengshui White Lightning toostrong.

Wugong households chafed at being kept from tilling responsibility lands.Many resented exclusion from household sideline and marketing activity. Vil-lage party secretary Zhang Duan inveighed that if households used their pigmanure on responsibility lands, collective production would suer.

State command of the economy seemed unfair. Popular or hot goodswere available to villagers only if the commune bought unpopular or coldgoods. To get good homespun cloth, a unit also had to purchase fteen un-needed pitchforks; every straw mat cost an additional cloth bag. To get a beltfrom the commune, a villager had to buy two bags of tooth powder; a -yuanmirror cost an additional and unneeded spare parts for a wagon.

Theft

With decent weather, improved incentives, reduced pressure to reinvest, and asharp drop in state requisitions and agricultural taxes, the Raoyang food crisisended in . Team in Wugong village, home of the old elite southern Lilineage, even responded to an appeal by former Wugong residents by contrib-uting , catties of grain for famine relief to Dezhou city in neighboringShandong province, where kin had moved. In corn, millet, and sor-ghum output rose signicantly in the pacesetting village; peanut and cottonproduction were also up. Although the wheat harvest fell, total grain outputpassed one million catties, up , from . Collective vegetable pro-duction soared.

Before the harvest, Anping county contracted to buy , cattiesof vegetables from Wugong commune at a set price. But after the bumperharvest, prices dropped. Anping refused to honor the contract. Weeks passedand the vegetables shrunk in size, weight, and value. They began to rot.Village ocials pleaded with commune leaders to pressure Anping authori-ties. The commune kept calling the county, thirty times in one day. For threemonths, Anping stalled. Brokers in Tianjin, in Yangquan in neighboringShanxi province, and in other famished regions heard about the vegetables inWugong. People from northeastern provinces oered to supply carts withrubber tires to facilitate transportation.

The county insisted, however, that regulations precluded moving produceacross county lines. While people went hungry in neighboring regions, ,catties of cabbage rotted in Wugongs Dongliman village, and , catties

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of radishes rotted in the Xiaodi supply and marketing coop. Finally, villagersillegally transported vegetables to Shenxian county.

In December Anping at last agreed to make some purchases. But the re-maining cabbages held only a third of their harvest weight, and the countyrefused to compensate villagers for the lost weight. That felt like theft. Vil-lagers refused to sell.

Geng Xiufeng protested to the provincial nancial committee in Tianjin,the Hebei capital, about the vegetable debacle, lambasting Anping ocials. Inlate a work team from Shijiazhuang came to investigate. It covered upfor the county, nding that vegetable losses were normal. Geng Xiufeng redo a missive denouncing the coverup. County ocials saw him as a loosecannon on the deck of their prized agship, a model Wugong led by GengChangsuo.

Restoration

By early the party center was split. Most leaders, sobered by the famine,advocated reform. But Mao, preoccupied with a specter of capitalism restoredin the Soviet Union, rejected the notion that development required greateruse of the household and market. He touted class struggle. Seeing conict-ing signals, most lower-level ocials concluded that the centers policies wereright in economics, left in politics.

In line with the downsizing, on January , , Raoyang was restored toits pre-Leap boundaries. A few months later, it was put under Hengshuiprefecture, whose party secretary, Zhao Shuguang, was a patron of Boss Geng.Wugong celebrated.

Raoyangs new party secretary, Li Chunyu, had headed the Shijiazhuangprefectural party committee oce. Chai Rui, the former Wugong communeleader who arranged the massive Leap-era grain requisition, was appointedcounty magistrate. Chai briefed Li on Raoyangs and Wugongs recenthistory.

Political rehabilitations were ordered in early . In Raoyang ,cases were reexamined, many dating from the antirightist move-ment. They included party and nonparty ocials, teachers, technicians, com-mercial and retail employees, workers, farmers, and students. Reinvestigationfound people completely innocent and another partially inno-cent. The remaining , were said to have been judged correctly. Therehabilitated victims were expected to thank the party.

In January the partys North China Bureau met to discuss graindistribution. Wugongs delegate, Geng Changsuo, supported requisition,tax, and price reforms to give villagers more grain, but he resisted strengthen-ing the household economy. He was on a collision course with reformers.

Geng joined other delegates at the Beijing Hotel, the capitals nest. The

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conference goal was to motivate work by distributing grain according to labor,rather than by head. Some delegates called for three freedoms and one con-tract (san zi yi bao), meaning more household plots, markets, and householdsidelines, and also a xed grain-delivery quota for households. Usually quiet,Geng burst out, This method wont work. The households with a largesupply of labor will get more grain than they need and will sell some at highprices; households with less labor wont have enough to eat. He predictedpolarization between rich and poor. How can we practice socialism whenthere is polarization? he asked. Gengs priority was meeting the food needsof the vulnerable: widows, the elderly, orphans, and military and martyr de-pendents. Reformers too supported welfare for the needy but insisted thatonly reward based on performance could spur the dispirited victims of theLeap to work hard.

Stories were told about people like Hu Kaiming, an ally of Hebeis Lin Tie,and about Anhui provincial party secretary Zeng Shisheng, who pressed forreform after famine ravaged Anhui. Hu promoted responsibility systemsthat closely linked labor and income, with the initiative for farming in thehands of small groups of households (bao chan dao zu).

Mao was said to have backed Hu in September at a meeting inHandan in southern Hebei. However, sta members of Lin Tie, Hus patron,told us that Maos comment was more like, If all it does is the good you say,who could say no? That is, Mao left himself plenty of wiggle room. Hu wroteto Mao in urging a reform agenda to restore villager enthusiasm.

Soon after Gengs outburst at the Beijing Hotel conference, Shijiazhuangprefectural secretary Kang told him to go home and remain silent. Twodecades later Geng recalled that he had taken a die-hard stance at the con-ference. All I had to do was agree with them at that time and [President] LiuShaoqi would have shaken hands with me.

Returnees

In and the state ordered more than million rst-generation citydwellers back to the countryside. In Tianjin had a target of ,rural-bound people. The forced population transfer reduced Chinas industrialworkers from . million in to . million in . To go to thecountryside was to be sent down (xiafang), excluded from a system of state-distributed and subsidized benets. By , percent of Chinas peoplelived in the countryside, the highest percentage in the history of the PeoplesRepublic.

Most returnees hoped the trek would be a sojourn. Once hard times passed,they were told, they would be rehired, restored to urban state payrolls, and pro-vided with subsidized grain. The partys word was law, but its promises werenot legally binding. Few ever returned to the cities or their state-sector jobs.

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In and Raoyang received , families, far below the regionalnorm. The military and its dependents were spared from being sent down.Many Raoyang natives served in Tianjin and Beijing, having joined the armyduring the anti-Japanese resistance or civil war. Perhaps three times as manyvillagers returned to neighboring Anping county, which had been occupied bythe Japanese. It had fewer Liberation Army soldiers but many people em-ployed in urban enterprises.

As part of the eort to cut state payrolls, returned to Wugong from jobsin Shenyang in the northeast to which villagers had ed in the famine,from factory labor in Tianjin and Qinhuangdao on the Hebei coast, from aconstruction company in Raoyang, and from a Handan steel mill. Some re-turned from state farms in Qinghai. Many had held urban and industrial jobsfor a decade or more. Wugong embraced its returnees. Much of rural China,lacking Wugongs resources and facing harsher conditions, resented having tofeed a ood of migrants.

Zhang Tiedi had worked in the Raoyang commerce bureau. Wugong as-signed him to make brigade-run enterprises more ecient and protablerope manufacture, rubber products, and repair of carts and irrigation ma-chines. Li Xi had joined the army in . He was stationed in Shijiazhuang, aHebei railroad center, where he learned of incursions by India in . Li wastrained as a communications specialist. Back in Wugong, the -year-old de-mobilized soldier was put in charge of sideline work.

Iron caster Xu Xinyue had worked in a Tianjin factory since . I musttell you the truth, he recalled, it was very dicult in the early s. I did nothave enough to eat. Xu had earned a hefty yuan per month in Tianjin asa grade worker on the eight-grade scale that governed Chinas industrialwages. When the price of grain skyrocketed to ve yuan for a catty of wheat onthe black market, Xu believed his wife and four children would do better withhim back in Wugong.

In , during the Leap, west-ender Xu Xiuwen had got an industrial jobat the Tianjin Power Turbine Factory. It was a major step up. She loved theindependence. Living with other young women, Xu felt camaraderie. She feltsorry for young women stuck in Wugong.

When Xus urban residency permit was revoked in , her girl friends, intears, vowed eternal friendship. Many who worked with Xu promised never tomarry and lose their independence. Like many returnees, Xu resolved to proveherself by becoming a model youth. She took the hardest jobs. She collected ayears worth of manure in six months. Covering oneself with shitMaossymbol of puritycaught the attention of leaders. Xu was honored as a modelworker. She stuck close to a group of young women activists, many of themreturnees.

Xu resisted pressure for an early marriage. She was . Matchmakers asked,

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What are you waiting for? If you wait any longer, all the good ones will besnapped up by others! Xu felt betrayed when a former co-worker wrote to sayshe was marrying. To Xu, marriage meant children. Women with childrenhave to stay at home, she said. Your life resembles a grinding stone thatalways turns in circles around a small family. Eventually you shrivel up like somuch dried grass. Xu turned her energies to politics.

The Politics of Virtue

The Leap disaster led to heavy cutbacks in education. In Mao endorsedhalf work, half study and told students, Dont ask the state for a penny. Thepoor would self-nance. In spring the center cut the number of seniorhigh schools by more than half, and the number of specialized junior highschools even more. A dozen or so Wugong villagers were among millionsforced to end their education. Sent home, they were told to help familiesweather the crisis. The Raoyang high school student body was lined up, eachgiven a number. The odd numbered were sent home. In the countyclosed its normal school for teacher training. Hopes and careers were dashed.A bitter ditty circulated:

Raoyang junior high students, nine years of study squandered.High school behind a horse, normal school closed.The province sends people down, the prefecture stops recruitment.Back home to till the big land, poverty generation after generation.

Boss Gengs daughter, Huijuan, was not among those sent home.On sighting a former teacher, one Wugong returnee, Li Huiying, feeling

like a failure after seven years in an urban school, recalled, I was so scared hewould laugh at me that I hurried into an outhouse to hide. On July ,, Li Huiying was sent back from the famous Xingji Junior High School,on the outskirts of fast-growing Shulu county, southwest of Wugong. Herdreams were shattered. Parents contacted a relative to arrange a city job, butthere were no jobs. In the elds, returnees felt locals mocking their failures,blisters, blood, exhaustion, and ignorance. It was humiliating when a produc-tion leader corrected them.

By early Chairman Maos concerns about backsliding toward capi-talism led to a stress on socialist propaganda. Defense Minister Lin Biaourged young people to emulate seless martyrs, usually young male soldiers.In January Mao highlighted a civilian militia under military control.Recruits were ordered to prepare for war, ght crime, and quash enemies.Youngsters, with opportunities lost because of Maos Leap disaster, weretold to focus on their own moral failings and the need to sacrice for thenation.

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The state prodded young people to work beyond their capacity in order toprove themselves. Some were crippled, among them Li Guanghui of Shenxiancounty, who had trained as a geologist but ended up directing foreign aairs inRaoyang after injuring his back.

Wugongs returnee from Xingji Junior High felt similar pressure. How wasLi Huiying to nd proper work and a suitable husband? She looked like afailure. Local leaders sometimes helped well-connected returnees. PepperpotLi, standing well under ve feet tall, was made deputy secretary of the villageyouth league. Excerpts from her diary were published in September toshow that Wugong was full of model youth with socialist ideals. Revolution-ary Wugong latched on to Maos propaganda line. Provincial publishers ed-ited out Huiyings concern for a good marriage and a good job. Still, nomatter how focused she was on winning party plaudits, she had little hope ofentering an inner-circle reserved mainly for men.

Li Huiyings diary became a fantasy of selessness, a testimony to red-ness. She claimed she was enthusiastic about returning to Wugong. She hadbeen studying science, but the party wanted her to do collective manual labor.It doesnt matter whether one climbs the summit of science or tills the elds,she wrote, its all for the party and state. Actually, she did want to continuewith science but soon realized it was impossible. The diary hinted at a humili-ating fall. On her fourth night home, walking to an outdoor movie, she over-heard a mocker say that Huiyings father had scrimped to pay for a fancyschool, but now she was back with nothing to show.

Huiying sought party membership, the road to respect and honor, to agood marriage and job, she thought. Less than two weeks after her return, sheapplied to join the party, noting in her diary that as a returned student she didnot expect to be admitted the rst time.

In late summer her parents learned that a Tianjin transport com-pany was looking for workers and urged her to apply. Responding in thelanguage of war communism, Li noted, The party asks me to do farm work;therefore, I wont do industrial work. I wont be a deserter. In the diaryshe criticized her parents work habits. Model youth could not be seen as easyon kin.

Li Huiying was selected as a ve good youth in midsummer . NowI must work even harder in the future, she wrote, or Ill be letting everyonedown. She became skilled in the politics of virtue.

By late and early Huiyings diary was full of self-congratulations.On October she wrote that she no longer felt exhausted doing eld workand always worked ahead of others. On October she noted that her clotheswere soaked with sweat. On March , ring a rie for the rst time, shefelt vigilant in the face of the enemy. On March she nished two daysof work in a single day. On April , when a cart ran over her foot, she

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kept working. No time can be lost in bringing manure to the elds, shewrote.

Huiyings girl friend, Shi Guiying, felt similar pressures. Her father, ShiXishen, an old guerrilla ghter and educated tractor technician from Handan,came to Wugong in fall to direct a tractor station, one of Chinas rst.Her family was classied as urban. But, as part of the forced exodus of ,technician Shis urban residency and grain ration were canceled; his family wasstuck in Wugong. Guiying could not continue her studies in the city afterclasses ended in July . She declared, When nal exams were over, child-hood was over.

Still, there were advantages in model Wugong. A budding writer, dancer,actress, and singer, Guiying was taught by authors, directors, and musicianssent to the state-privileged village, some for months or years. She performedSong of Our Advanced Coop during the temple festival in the market villageof Zoucun in , the year before Leap policies closed the market and festivalbecause they were feudal remnants.

Market towns were the sites of opera performances, temple festivals, andholiday galas. In the honeymoon era of the early s most Raoyang town-ships had opera troupes perform in the market, especially during the longNew Year festival. Market-town transactions linked families and villages inmarriage; business contracts were negotiated; and both daily consumer goodsand ritual and mourning items were available. Villagers blamed outsiders forthe loss of the festival.

In aspiring writer Shi Guiyings poem The Lights Are Turned On,celebrating Wugongs new power plant, a gift of patron Lin Tie, was pub-lished in a Hebei literary magazine. That same year she was a soloist in aRaoyang performance of a modern opera. But the aspiring writers future wasmarred by her fathers honesty. Having spoken out against the economicirrationality of the Leap, he was labeled a black element. The whole familywas under a political cloud.

Like her friend Li Huiying, Shi Guiying kept a revolutionary diary. In lateryears she recalled that joining the party was her daily dream, adding, Every-body knew that without party membership you had no future.

She realized that manual labor was a test. Never complain or ask to rest.Always volunteer for the most dicult and dirtiest work. Publicize ones ea-gerness to collect manure. On August , , she wrote, On the way backfrom harvesting corn I saw some shit on the road. I remembered that the moremanure we have, the more grain we get. Exhibiting the virtues that wouldearn her a ve good youth citation, Shi proclaimed, Its not shit, its gold,the cleanest of all things.

According to the diary, when a commune ocial asked her a trick questionabout taking an urban job, Guiying replied, I already have a job; farming is

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my job. But what if you were needed to do another job? the ocial asked.Guiying responded, Ill do whatever the party wants me to do! Only thenwas she told she had been picked for a mobile lm-projection team that cov-ered villages. She coolly recorded in her diary, The party tells me where togo and where to ght.

Villagers laughed at Guiyings Beijing accent. She developed a passionfor movies, especially those featuring female socialist heroes. Monitoring herown political thought was like keeping an eye on a lm projector, she wrote.If I inspect and keep it clean every day, I can correct problems in a timelyway.

In early , with war communism propaganda pervasive, Guiyings herowas martyred soldier Lei Feng, then lionized in the media. He was said to havesacriced his life for the revolution. At night in bed, she fantasized about thehandsome Lei Feng. Life is worth living, and I love my life, she wrote, but ifit is necessary to sacrice it for the happiness of the people, Ill rush forwardwithout hesitation. She hoped to become a glorious party member.

Guiying kept her most intimate dreams out of the diary. In she hadwarmed to junior high classmate Li Mengjie. Orphaned since the age of eight,he lived with his sister in the east village. The Geng coop had cultivated theirland, providing the children with income. State propaganda called Mengjieand his sister a second set of orphans adopted by Gengs coop in the lates. The tale made Boss Geng and Tigress Xu, his wife, seem like selesssaviors. Years later, Mengjies sister, Xiuying, skewered the myth that wroteher sacrices for her brother out of the story. People can say whatever theywant, but the truth is that old Xu never served us a single meal!

Aspiring writer Shi saw herself as the savior of the orphaned Mengjie, threeyears her senior. Mengjie, who saw little point to school, towered over class-mates. Guiying thought of herself as the goddess in the popular movie Tianxian pei, who lived on earth as an ordinary villager because she had compassionfor a poor man. In the movie, the lovers married and lived happily ever after inan idyllic mountain village.

Shis teacher told her she was dreaming. Guiying and Mengjie had little incommon. But by marrying a poor villager, a living symbol of the Wugongmyth, Guiying would be saving Mengjie and Mengjie would be saving her. In, as the famine deepened, the two began secretly exchanging notes.

Guiyings diary said nothing about the diculties she and Mengjie facedduring the Leap. He was always famished. He quit school in the hungrysummer of and joined the army to secure food. He won a prized postingin Beijing. Village conditions were tougher. With Guiyings father a politicaltarget and the household ineligible for state rations, the family was desperate.The small pot of gruel that Guiying brought home from the public mess hallheld little millet for the family, consisting mainly of discolored rotten vegeta-bles. An ironic village verse went:

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Day before yesterday ate rice gruel,Yesterday ate millet gruel,Today ate corn gruel,Tomorrow Ill have sorghum gruel,Day after tomorrow therell only be cabbage gruel,After that what kind of gruel can we expect?

One day Guiying joined malnourished classmates in stealing cabbage leavesand carrots. Caught, they were publically humiliated for failing to stand up tothe test of temporary material diculties.

When Mengjie left for the army, the two corresponded. No stigma wasattached to young people writing, particularly a soldier. They exchanged let-ters for three years. Correspondence, usually by hand-delivered note, was partof rural courtship in the s and s. Junior high students built relation-ships by exchanging poems and notes. The risk of embarrassing discoveryadded excitement. A Chinese author noted that reading and writing letterswas the most important thing in the life of young people with secondaryschool education. Eager to avoid ridicule, intimates could not even hint atrelationships. Strict gender divisions meant that there were few opportunitiesto be alone. In summer, however, when ten-foot-tall sorghum crops created agreen curtain, young people could share moments alone. In the early s,with education cut short, many young returnees married as soon as possible. Avery few, like Xu Xiuwen, the returned worker from Tianjin, said that old-fashioned marriages meant a loss of independence.

Resurrection

In Wugong reaped a second consecutive bumper harvest. A grain yieldof catties per mu was the best ever. Cotton also set a record. Wugongseconomy boomed.

The state requisitioned , catties of grain in , a fraction of the, catties delivered in the famine year of . Income in cash and kindincreased for the second straight year. In each collective member re-ceived a record -yuan income, including the value of grain and other crops.The yuan paid in cash nearly doubled the previous high of , prior tostate-imposed collectivization. In per capita distributed income shot upto yuan based on a labor day that paid . yuan, by far the highest dailypay in the history of the collective. Reform initiatives won the highest dis-tribution since the creation of Boss Gengs big coop in .

Grain distribution soared from a low of catties per person in the famineyear of to catties in and then to a record catties in .The grain distribution record would not be surpassed for a -year spanduring which reform was again negated by revolution. The extraordinary

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-yuan average per capita distributed income in also represented asettling of accounts as the village moved from villagewide (brigade) account-ing to accounting by customary neighborhoods, the east, center, and west,designated as teams , , and .

Good weather, vastly reduced state requisitions, lower agricultural taxesand collective investment, good sales of collective sidelines in timber, rope,and fruit, and improved incentives boosted Wugongs net collective incomefrom , yuan in to , in . With the state relaxing itsgrain-rst and antimarket policies, and with collective sidelines and commerceno longer treated as exploitation, sidelines surged.

Revolutionary logic had sidelines blocking agriculture. In fact, sidelineincome allowed farmers to view low-priced labor for grain as famine insur-ance, while cash was earned elsewhere. Sidelines also provided consumerproducts. In village sidelines accounted for percent of collectiveincome, the highest share since , when the state rst began to squeeze outthe rural market in the name of socialism.

What distinguished Wugong from other recovering villages was that itsgains came from collective enterprises. Having been burned in the Leap, mostpoor North China villages would not invest in collective sidelines. Some thatdid failed. In Fengyang county in Anhui province, which Chairman Mao hadproclaimed a model of revolution, but which suered grievously in the Leapfamine, villagers ordered to reinvest in the collective instead consumed all theyearned, saying that sacred custom demanded it. In Marxist terms, one mightsay that the more the state pushed socialism, the more villagers embracedfeudalism. Leap disasters destroyed for poorest villagers trust in distant collec-tives. Faith grew in local bonds, sacred mores, and working for the householdeconomy and the market.

Wugong heeded the reform call to invest less, distribute more, diversify,and strengthen the team-level unit to win back disenchanted people. Resilientvillagers did the rest.

In spring the reform-minded Zhang Kerang, head of Hebeis RuralWork Department, invited Boss Geng to a North China meeting of ruralmodels. The conference encouraged further rural reforms, including the threeguarantees and one reward (san bao yi jiang) system of household and small-team responsibility. Village leader Chen Yonggui came from Dazhai, a fast-rising Shanxi village just across Hebeis western border. Geng had met Chenfor the rst time in January at the Beijing Hotel Conference. From WangGuofans Paupers Coop in Xipu, another Mao model of revolution, came DuBao, the younger brother of Du Kui, who ran the village. Boss Geng builtpersonal ties to leaders from better connected villages.

In July Hebei party secretary Lin Tie further prioritized economicwork. Lin was buoyed by reports from North China Bureau party secretary LiXuefeng that Mao had approved small-group farming as a means to break the

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famine. Lin encouraged reformer Hu Kaiming to send letters to Mao explain-ing that Leap policies had lost touch with reality and documenting how therural economy rebounded when villagers were allowed to act on their ownperceived interests. Mao ordered that the letters be circulated. What Lin didnot know was that Mao told his condants that Hus agenda of having vil-lagers go it alone negated the promise of revolutionary socialism.

A Hebei party committee resolution designated agriculture, not politics, asthe main responsibility of the party secretary at every level, reemphasized therole of the smaller team as the critical level of production, and initiated anexperimental program in , production teams to combine sidelines,animal husbandry, and agriculture, a key reformist plank. Another experi-mental program in twelve Hebei counties stressed animal husbandry, side-lines, and handicrafts, with emphasis on household production. It focused onthe particular strengths of localities in contrast to the revolutionary emphasison growing grain everywhere.

In late Hebei catapulted Wugong to the fore as a leading model ofsocialist modernization. In early Hebei secretary Lin Tie invited GengChangsuo to a provincial Agricultural Work Conference in Tianjin. Gengliked what Lin said about the mechanization of collective agriculture. At theTianjin meeting Geng met Premier Zhou Enlai. While shaking hands, Zhouguessed Gengs age at or so. Geng was actually . The premier com-mented, Good. You are very healthy. He was not. But his resurrectedvillage was close to achieving national prominence.

With Lin Tie again promoting Wugong, visitors ocked to the red-agunit. Village leaders again pledged to attain high yields. In September they boasted that in Wugong would harvest catties of grain per muand of cotton, up and percent, respectively. One month later, afterthe partys Tenth Plenum, Geng upped the ante, proclaiming that Wugongwould bring in a six, three, three harvest, catties of grain and each ofcotton and peanuts. Collective sideline income was projected at ,yuan. To meet the targets, the grain harvest would have to jump percentand cotton more than percent above bumper levels. More land wouldbe leveled, more wells dug, more pig manure applied, more labor mobilizedfor collective projects. But even before nature interrupted Wugongs smoothsailing, revolution roiled stormy seas.

MEMORY

AND MYTH

As the th anniversary of the original coop neared, Hebeiparty secretary Lin Tie sought to involve Mao in legitimating Wu-gongs achievement. When some of Maos personal guards visitedNanwangzhuang, a Hebei village whose leader, Wang Yukun, thechairman had once received, Lin got the leader of the guards toconvey an invitation to Mao to visit Wugong (as well as Nanwang-zhuang) to celebrate its pioneering of socialism. Lins eort to winMaos blessing failed, but Lin believed that Wugong best displayedthe superiority of socialism: a productive, redistributive collectiveeconomy in contrast both to a polarizing market economy and tofundamentalist economic irrationality.

Wugongs tenth-anniversary gala had represented socialismas large economic organizations and constriction of markets. Sincethe famine, however, gigantism had been criticized and the house-hold economy encouraged. The partys line after September tol-erated some economic reforms but simultaneously touted class strug-gle to prevent capitalist restoration. Lin Tie then promoted Wugongas emblematic of socialist modernizationmechanization, electri-cation, and water controladvancing material interests throughdiversication via ourishing collective agriculture and sidelines.

Memory Wars

From his provincial capital, Tianjin, Lin commissioned a volumehailing Wugongs four-family coop, choosing as editor thewriter-ocial Wang Lin, vice chair of the Tianjin Writers Associa-tion. Wang had attended Qingdao University, where he met JiangQing, later Maos wife. In the late s, they were classmates at theLu Xun Academy of Literature and Art in Yanan, the partys wartimecapital. A native of nearby Hengshui, Wang hid in Raoyang duringJapans military oensive and worked in Wugong during the land reform. In he wrote an article on the Wang Guofan

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paupers coop that Mao featured in his Socialist Upsurge in Chinas Countrysideanthology to promote collectivization.

In fall Wang took Tianjin writers to Wugong to gather materials for abook. But Wugongs refusal to accede to gargantuan production claims andthe collapse of the Leap doomed the project. In , in preparation for thegala th-anniversary celebration of the original four-family coop, Lin Tieproposed sending twenty writers led by Wang Lin to Wugong to produce abook highlighting the achievements of a modernizing village.

Helped by his old Wugong friend, Geng Xiufeng, Wang prepared a -page overview. He cut a section dealing with the provincial governmentsfailed eort in to reduce the size of the nearly household Wugongcoop. Xiufeng complained, That section is very important, and its true.Wang explained that the provincial party committee had asked, Why do youwant to expose the dark side of the provincial committee? Saying he wasscared sti, Wang dropped the sensitive material on this conict betweenprovincial and village leaders.

Wugong leaders presented the village as a model of collectivism. The mediafeatured feisty Xu Shukuan, Geng Changsuos wife. A picture of the Tigresswith a new radio appeared in Hebei Daily in late . Two orphans the coopadopted in were by her side. Xu Shukuan, who ercely loves the collec-tive was the caption. At , Xu helped lead east village team and was deputyhead of the womens association. Xu felt that socialism had saved her frombeing an object of ridicule, a child sold into marriage. She dismissed mut-terings against her for prying into family aairs in order to prod villagersinto collective eorts. Socialism, in her view, was the public good replacingfamilism.

She liked the rhetoric of the heaven-storming leap into communism. Somepeople say I mind too many things; they call me a busybody. I say, just so! I am abusybody. Some people, noting my true concern for the collective and mystrong character, say I want to be a heaven stormer. I say, just so! I will storm theheavens. Villagers who had been publicly shamed by her itched to get even.

When Wang Lin arrived in early , he knew the story the Hebei partywanted. Wugong would not be praised in the language of the Leap, in whichwealth sprang from the spirit of everything for the public.

Wangs team included Liu Xi, a deputy head of the Tianjin Writers Associa-tion who had visited the village a decade earlier with her husband, screen-writer Hu Su, to help orchestrate the coops tenth anniversary. Another writer,Ge Wen, came to Wugong after researching a book on the Mao-favored WangGuofan village. Aware that in Mao had approved helping two Hebeivillages, one led by Wang Guofan and the other by Wang Yukun, she wantedto see how Wugong did with far less state aid.

Interviewing went on throughout spring . Villagers were wary. Yang

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Guan, the head of the brigade forestry team, answered in monosyllables. Theparty secretary, Zhang Duan the Ox, who stuck close to the outsiders, wasembarrassed. The writers were told whom to see. Activists accompaniedthem as minders every step of the way. The writers heard of oppression andhardship in the old society and during the Japanese invasion. Elders andorphans vouched that only the collective cared for the weak and vulnerable.Young militants embodied Chairman Maos view of the redness of the nextgeneration. A heroic mythos presented Boss Geng Changsuo as a lesser ver-sion of the worshipped Mao.

Womens leader Qiao Wenzhi told how senior lineage member Qiao Da-mei prostrated herself whenever she saw Boss Geng or Wenzhi herself, be-cause the party had helped Damei in her old age. When Geng explained thatcredit belonged to Mao, Damei walked three times a day to commune head-quarters to bow to a portrait of Mao.

Before publication, a draft manuscript had to pass inspection by the com-mune and county party committees. The commune party secretary approved.But county party secretary Li Chunyu was troubled by the chapter on theoutspoken Geng Xiufeng, which noted that the original four-householdcoop was initiated by Xiufeng several months before Maos instruction to GetOrganized! County boss Li asked Wang, Are you saying that Geng Xiufengwent to organize peasants before Chairman Mao published Get Organized?Can he be smarter than Chairman Mao? This is a mistake of principle. We canthave this chapter! Wang responded that the order of events had been veried.No one was suggesting that Xiufeng was smarter than Mao. Writer Ge Wenagreed with Li that the chapter should be cut because Xiufeng was an un-disciplined self-promoter. After the writers left, Li Chunyu sent aides tothe Tianjin publisher to get the chapter on Xiufeng deleted. The publisherrefused.

Tensions between county leaders and Geng Xiufeng surfaced again when aBeijing lm crew highlighted Wugong in a documentary on communes. Thelm featured Geng Changsuo, members of the original coop, scenes of every-day life, pictures of wheat elds, and images of roads that carried grain to thestate. Because it also showed Xiufeng, county secretary Li charged that Xiu-feng was trying to steal Changsuos glory. Xiufeng believed that few in thevillage had done more than he had to dramatize Changsuos contributions.

Back to Fundamentals

Word spread that in , at the seaside resort of Beidaihe, Mao had com-mented that he felt oppressed (ya) by a deluge of reports on Hebei reformpioneer Hu Kaimings program in Zhangjiakou. Hu was placed under housearrest. Reform was in trouble.

Because of restrictions on commerce, the only way to get spare parts was to

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send agents to distant warehouse centers. In early Li Changhai trekkedsix hours from Wugong to the railroad crossroads city of Shijiazhuang to buyparts for team s equipment. A former co-worker urged Li to buy a kiln thatwould sell for a much higher price near Wugong. With money so precious,people were conscious of the price of almost everything. Li wrote to GengChangsuo about his prot-making plan. Boss Geng snapped back, No!

On his return, party secretary Zhang Duan lectured Li that buying for protwas the capitalist road. Maos emphasis was on defeating capitalism. In Marcha campaign began to emulate the communist values of the martyred soldier LeiFeng, followed two months later by a socialist education movement.

Geng Changsuos antimarket zeal was shrewd politics. After reining in thekiln deal, he got the village party branch to agree not to promote sidelineindustries of a commercial nature. Sidelines must promote agriculture, notlead toward commerce or speculation. Villagers hurt by the economic irra-tionality of revolutionary policies either resisted by maneuvering around theconstraints or suered.

Wugong, whose postfamine recovery relied on a rapid expansion of collec-tive sidelines, endorsed four economically self-wounding principles: no par-ticipation in activities contrary to party policy on sidelines, no commercialsidelines, no sidelines involving materials that are not available locally, and nosidelines involving raw materials needed by the state. While villagers else-where expanded household sidelines and market activity, Wugong even shrankcollective sidelines, whose earnings sank from the peak of , yuanto just , yuan in and , yuan in . Sideline employees fellfrom in to in .

Geng pressed villagers into land reclamation in early . Sixty-two-year-old Geng tried to lead by example. Youth would be shamed if they didnot outdo their senior. Women were prodded by Xu Shukuan, Gengs wife.As popular enthusiasm for state-imposed toil dwindled, leaders imposeddiscipline.

The economic price of political virtue seemed high to most villagers. GengXiufeng recalled that Wugong villagers chafed at being denied the opportunityto earn cash by selling crops from household plots as some villages to the westdid. Those people are going it alone, a villager complained, so theres norecord of how much grain they produce. Our village is collective, and grainrequisitions are done strictly by the book. Theres not even a catty left over. Itsuseless to produce more grain. All you get is an empty bag.

The young, looking for mates, mobility, and material progress, were notpacied by tales pitting preliberation landlords and savage invaders againstpoor peasant heroes who provided the revolutionary army with grain, shoes,and recruits. Some villagers wondered if Geng Changsuo and his family werescoring political points at the expense of their families ability to get by in hardtimes.

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Neighboring villagers arriving in early to learn from the red-ag unitconcluded that Wugong fared poorly. At lunch, villagers hid their coarsegrain. With Wugong curbing market activity and Boss Geng delivering thebest grain to the state, neighbors found little to emulate. Outsiders, however,repeated the standard criticism of models: privileged Wugong ocials dinedsumptuously.

In Hebei modernizers saw revolutionaries locking villagers into stag-nant misery, thwarting socialisms promise that the poor would prosper. Silenton the reform issues of household sidelines and commerce, Hebei party secre-tary Lin Tie, a modernizer, publicly pushed mechanized and diversied collec-tives. In early Hebei lieutenant governor Yang Yichen went a step fur-ther. Visiting Wugong commune, he touted the market as a means to jump-start the economy. Boss Geng sat in. Yang urged Wugong commune partysecretary Huang to raise income via sidelines and commerce. Geng prevailedupon Huang to see such measures as neither revolutionary nor rewardingmanual labor. While Gengs s coop had risen on a union of sidelines andcommerce, he now viewed the market as exploitation. Wugong would pro-mote collective sidelines while cracking down on the household economy andthe market.

When the commune party secretary reiterated his stress on collective enter-prise, the lieutenant governor oered the usual carrot. The province wouldguarantee , catties of scarce chemical fertilizer at subsidized prices andbuy back a grain surplus equal in value to the chemical fertilizer. Commerce,production, and prots would soar without risk. Wugong would not, how-ever, take the bait.

By the next day the visitors were gone. Geng Changsuo redoubled hiscommitment to the collective, assuring that labors fruits would meet the basicneeds of villagers and fulll the states grain and cotton sales quotas. Heclaimed that collective labor helped Wugong get through the dearth betterthan others. Some villagers were not persuaded.

In Lu Guang, an adviser to Wugong in the period , wasattacked. A Lin Tie subordinate, Lu served in the North China Bureaus orga-nization department tied to the network of Politburo member Peng Zhen, theparty secretary of Beijing. In an innerparty campaign that preceded the social-ist education movement, Lu was targeted by revolutionary Li Xuefeng, therst secretary of the partys North China Bureau, who challenged conservativemodernizer Peng Zhen. Lu was demoted two grades and removed from theorganization department, which controlled appointments.

The purge seemed a portent. Members of the Hebei party apparatus linkedto Lin Tie, Lu Guangs patron, worried when Lu was accused of being acapitalist roader and the reform pioneer Hu Kaiming was arrested. Who elsemight fall in attacks on Peng Zhens subordinates?

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The Great Flood

From August , , rain fell for a week. Water rose knee deep in the elds.Wugong commune members built embankments to keep the ood from theirelds. Worst hit were Nahshan and Beishan villages; all crops and most homeswere destroyed. Fortunately, the June wheat harvest had been good. InWugong it was excellent: catties per mu, even better than in and. The state took its wheat share before the rains. But corn, sorgh