Women, the Family, and Peasant Revolution in China
Women, the Family, and Peasant Revolution in China

Author: Kay Ann Johnson

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-02-15

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 0226401944

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Kay Ann Johnson provides much-needed information about women and gender equality under Communist leadership. She contends that, although the Chinese Communist Party has always ostensibly favored women's rights and family reform, it has rarely pushed for such reforms. In reality, its policies often have reinforced the traditional role of women to further the Party's predominant economic and military aims. Johnson's primary focus is on reforms of marriage and family because traditional marriage, family, and kinship practices have had the greatest influence in defining and shaping women's place in Chinese society. Conversant with current theory in political science, anthropology, and Marxist and feminist analysis, Johnson writes with clarity and discernment free of dogma. Her discussions of family reform ultimately provide insights into the Chinese government's concern with decreasing the national birth rate, which has become a top priority. Johnson's predictions of a coming crisis in population control are borne out by the recent increase in female infanticide and the government abortion campaign.

The Red Mirror
The Red Mirror

Author: Chihua Wen

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-02-12

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 0429972369

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These evocative stories bring to life the tragic personal impact of the Cultural Revolution on the families of China's intellectuals. Now adults, survivors recall their childhood during the tumultuous years between 1965 and 1976, when Mao's death finally drew a curtain on a bitterly failed social and political experiment.A series of first-person narratives eloquently describes the life-long influence of this seminal period on China's children. Those who were teenagers in the late 1960s joined the Red Guards and the revolutionary rebel groups, following Mao's directives to make revolution, often to their own undoing. Those who were too young to participate directly were even more vulnerable. Although they had little understanding of the political firestorm that engulfed their parents, they were old enough to understand and feel the terror it brought. Vividly capturing the emotional intensity of the time, these stories explore what it was like to be caught up in revolutionary fervor, to be sent to the countryside, to be separated,either ideologically or physically,from one's parents, often forever.By undermining families and family structure, the Cultural Revolution created a generation of Chinese who view politics, the Communist Party, and life itself with deep cynicism. Presenting a spectrum of individual stories of people who saw the Cultural Revolution through the eyes of a child, The Red Mirror offers rare insights for understanding the crippling legacy of the Cultural Revolution.

Last Boat Out of Shanghai
Last Boat Out of Shanghai

Author: Helen Zia

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 545

ISBN-13: 034552232X

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"The dramatic, real-life stories of four young people caught up in the mass exodus of Shanghai in the wake of China's 1949 Communist Revolution--a precursor to the struggles faced by emigrants today. Shanghai has historically been China's jewel, its richest, most modern and westernized city. The bustling metropolis was home to sophisticated intellectuals, entrepreneurs, and a thriving middle class when Mao's proletarian revolution emerged victorious from the long civil war. Terrified of the horrors the Communists would wreak upon their lives, citizens of Shanghai who could afford to fled in every direction. Seventy years later, the last generation to fully recall this massive exodus have opened the story to Chinese American journalist Helen Zia, who interviewed hundreds of exiles about their journey through one of the most tumultuous events of the twentieth century. From these moving accounts, Zia weaves the story of four young Shanghai residents who wrestled with the decision to abandon everything for an uncertain life as refugees in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the U.S. Young Benny, who as a teenager became the unwilling heir to his father's dark wartime legacy, must choose between escaping Hong Kong or navigating the intricacies of a newly Communist China. The resolute Annuo, forced to flee her home with her father, a defeated Nationalist official, becomes an unwelcome young exile in Taiwan. The financially strapped Ho fights deportation in order to continue his studies in the U.S. while his family struggles at home. And Bing, given away by her poor parents, faces the prospect of a new life among strangers in America"--

The Tragedy of Liberation
The Tragedy of Liberation

Author: Frank Dikötter

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2013-08-29

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1408837595

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The second installment in 'The People's Trilogy', the groundbreaking series from Samuel Johnson Prize-winning author Frank Dikötter 'For anyone who wants to understand the current Beijing regime, this is essential background reading' Anne Applebaum 'Essential reading for all who want to understand the darkness that lies at the heart of one of the world's most important revolutions' Guardian 'Dikötter performs here a tremendous service by making legible the hugely controversial origins of the present Chinese political order' Timothy Snyder In 1949 Mao Zedong hoisted the red flag over Beijing's Forbidden City. Instead of liberating the country, the communists destroyed the old order and replaced it with a repressive system that would dominate every aspect of Chinese life. In an epic of revolution and violence which draws on newly opened party archives, interviews and memoirs, Frank Dikötter interweaves the stories of millions of ordinary people with the brutal politics of Mao's court. A gripping account of how people from all walks of life were caught up in a tragedy that sent at least five million civilians to their deaths.

The House of Yan
The House of Yan

Author: Lan Yan

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2020-01-28

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 0062899821

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Through the sweeping cultural and historical transformations of China, entrepreneur Lan Yan traces her family’s history through early 20th Century to present day. The history of the Yan family is inseparable from the history of China over the last century. One of the most influential business leaders of China today, Lan Yan grew up in the company of the country’s powerful elite, including Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Deng Xiaoping. Her grandfather, Yan Baohang, originally a nationalist and ally of Chiang Kai-shek, later joined the communists and worked as a spy during World War II, never falling out of favor with Soong May-ling, aka Mrs. Chiang Kai-shek. Lan’s parents were diplomats, and her father, Yan Mingfu, was Mao’s personal Russian translator. In spite of their elevated status, the Yan’s family life was turned upside down by the Cultural Revolution. One night in 1967, in front of a terrified ten-year-old Lan, Red Guards burst into the family home and arrested her grandfather. Days later, her father was arrested, accused of spying for the Soviet Union. Her mother, Wu Keilang, was branded a counter-revolutionary and forced to go with her daughter to a re-education camp for five years, where Lan came of age as a high school student. In recounting her family history, Lan Yan brings to life a century of Chinese history from the last emperor to present day, including the Cultural Revolution which tore her childhood apart. The reader obtains a rare glimpse into the mysteries of a system which went off the rails and would decimate a large swathe of the intellectual, economic and political elite country. The little girl who was crushed by the Cultural Revolution has become one of the most active businesswomen in her country. In telling her and her family’s story, Lan Yan serves up an intimate account of the history of contemporary China.

Wild Swans
Wild Swans

Author: Jung Chang

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2008-06-20

Total Pages: 592

ISBN-13: 1439106495

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The story of three generations in twentieth-century China that blends the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history—a bestselling classic in thirty languages with more than ten million copies sold around the world, now with a new introduction from the author. An engrossing record of Mao’s impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love, Jung Chang describes the extraordinary lives and experiences of her family members: her grandmother, a warlord’s concubine; her mother’s struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents’ experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution. Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a “barefoot doctor,” a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving—and ultimately uplifting—detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.

Chinese Families in the Post-Mao Era
Chinese Families in the Post-Mao Era

Author: Deborah Davis

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1993-10-02

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9780520082229

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This collection of essays concerns both urban and rural Chinese communities, ranging from professional to working-class families. The contributors attempt to determine whether and to what extent the policy shifts that followed Mao Zedong's death affected Chinese families.