1. Wow, Dr. Dube really refreshed my mind from his presentation about the Up to the mountains, and Down to the Villages. The authentic pictures and videos just brought the real part of Chinese history to our front. I wondered how could the chinese govenment run the states while all the educated youth had gone out of classrooms and to the wild fields farming like peasants? How could they organize their living, housing, and their daily activities? How could that generation later survivie when they finally got chance to leave the villages and came back to their cities? WIth those questions, I actually picked up phones and talked to my Chinese friends who had certain experience about it. One of my friends told me his niece was assigned to his village where his parents lived and stayed with their parents and learnd how to farm till thy went bavk. How about those hwo had no relatives or friends in the villages? He told me they acutally organied very well to welcome those educated youth from the urban area to settle in the villages. Definitely, they missed the opportunities of gloing to colles universities till later when the govenment resumed the National Entrence Exam system. This is an emtreme belief to run the government without thinking or conserning their people's needs. Fortunately, our generation was born into that eara, but out of the impact. Probaly, that's why we studied so hard to try to pass the exam to squeeze into the universities we dreamed.

I found Professor Dube's lecture on the sent down youth very intriguing. Prof. Dube gave us a synopsis of the various reasons why Mao sent the youth to the country side even after having gone through the Great Leap Forward and a famine that killed millions. The cities did not have enough jobs to accommodate the youth, the Red Guards of the cities were beginning to cause more chaos amongst them, and Mao felt that this would be a good way of fighting capitalism. Nonetheless, the start of the lecture allowed me to see the drastic changes that China has undergone in the last sixty years.

Dr. Dube showed us various contemporary pictures of China today. One of a Tibetan couple and the different pictures that are taken during or after a wedding. He also showed us one of a procession of foreign cars that paraded through a city commemorating a wedding. Furthermore, he showed us how today about 68 percent of China's population feel a lot of pressure to be successful and make money, highlighting the fact that in China today materialism is at an all-time high.

What always surprises me, is the fact that China historically has been very rural, so having had 10-15 percent of the urban population sent to the country side is mind boggling, but in many ways understandable. I suppose the Mao thought that the country side could offer food and work for the youth as opposed to jobs in the city where industry was slowly being jump started. I liked how Prof. Dude compared the idea of going back to the country as a good thing, as an experience of purification, which goes well with a lot of the Daoist readings of the past or even the poets Du Fu, Li Bai and Meng Haoran, who made the mountains and country side seem idyllic places. Nonetheless, this was Mao's way of consolidating power and strengthening his position within the communist power.

What surprised me were the little comic books that Prof. Dube showed of the Hong Xiao Bing and how she turned in her grandfather for being a Russian spy. It must have been a scary place to live through if you were not following Communist line and reading Chairman Mao's teaching in your down time. It also made me think of Dr. Cheng’s lecture, and how Lu Xun writes about a Russian spy being beheaded by a Japanese officer. It as if history was repeating itself, and making you wonder how Lu Xun might have reacted to everything that would be happening 25 years after his death.

What really struck me was seeing pictures of Xi Jinping as a sent down youth, spending seven years in the country side, living in a cave, and how he wants to include this era of history in the overall narrative of Chinese modern history. Having this era and other events, in my opinion, is important if the party still wants to remain relevant, though it might be tricky in how it wants to navigate the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, nonetheless, if the US is able to face its own history (The Trail of Tears, Segregation, Slavery, Reservations, Mob Lynchings etc) and still remain in power I see no reason why China's political parties today might put themselves in jeopardy for including those histories in their narratives.

What I found fascinating, in addition to learning about the sent down youth and how Xi Jinping was a part of that experience, was how other people are getting together and visiting the places where they essentially grew up. Where they lived through experiences that made them become who they were. My professor of Chinese history at Cal State L.A. was a sent down youth, and she somehow managed to go to university, after she returned, and then was able travel to the US and become a professor. What also intrigued me was how Xi Jingpin gave a speech where he told the audience that China has had great philosophers from who there is much to be learned, and how he intends to shape the way China is perceived by the world and by Chinese in China. 

China is going through many changes and hopefully it’s for the good of its people. Hopefully by looking back at their own history and reviving old teachings they don't close themselves off to ideas outside of China, but that they continue to get the best of both worlds as they begin to implement changes. I also suspect that China's future is closely tied to the outside world, because by being open about its environmental challenges, maybe someone in another country might discover a way to really make some effective changes in China that will help its people, and maybe some of the changes in China will serve as examples for other countries. 

In this session we learned about the so called sent down youth of China which was relocated into rural areas during Mao Zedong's era.  The reasons why Mao Zedong pomoted this relocation can be summarized as follows:  the lack of jobs in urban areas, ideological purification and the effort to pacify the cities by ridding them of revisionists, or those whom did not conform to a pure Communist ideology.  Another topic that came up in this session was the values today's youth in China have adopted.  It is interesting to note how far removed today's youth is from this aspect of China's past.  This aspect of China's past under Mao Zedong's governance sharply contrasts with how China is being projected today and the attitudes and lives that young people are now living.  It is interesting to see how China and its people have evolved and how this evolution marks a drastic change in China's cultural landscape. During the down to the countryside movement there was the relocation of young people from the city to rural areas for the purpose of being reeducated by the poor peasants.  After Mao Zedong's rule ended, there has been a concentrated effort in the development of cities and so now there is a concentration of youth in urban areas, the place of development, culture and jobs.  The youth of the past were reeducated in the countryside while the youth of today find themselves trapped by materialism and consumerism fueled by rising expectations and a booming economy. It appears that China has reached the end of one era to welcome the dawn of a different time.  As China's economy rises, people's expectations and aspirations grow with it.  This new cultural and economic development seemingly marks a new and modern China as China's youth are increasingly being driven by a western lifestyle, another stark contrast with its not so far past. While this development suggests change and an openness to foreign influences, the question remains whether China will become a more open society in the future.    

The controversy of leadership seems to be such a well articulated theme throughout this course and this was is certainly articulated through Mao. It’s always incredibly entertaining to hear how much his cult has grown from stories of how his land breaks production value to curing disease, but also the more critical nature of his leadership. It seems very clearly that with only 2 ounces of meat and 40 pounds of rice a month, farmers were grossly undernourished. And so I’m left curious as to whether the amount of deaths from 1959 to 1962 were entirely due to famine, but rather other sicknesses that they did not know how to treat. I’m further curious about what the perception of Xi Jinping has been, having worked in the farms and also being compared today as Mao. I’ll need to do some personal exploration on this,

I thoroughly enjoyed the reading the article of the sent down youth titled, “Images, Memories and Lives of Sent-Down Youth in Yunnan” as it was sad to read how these poor enthusiastic kids/students were tricked into leaving their families with false pretenses of money, jobs, free room and board,  and free meals. These poor sent down youth had to give in to their parents pleading who begged them to go. Actually, in a family of three children one child had to go and in a family of 5 children, three had to go. The sent down youth had to enforce their filial piety to please their parents. Not only were the students fooled, but also the parents, as the parents thought of their hardships being alleviated by sending their sons/daughter to such a wonderful place, where they would be taken care of and easing the responsibility and the burden of the parents of having to take care of their children in ways such as not having to feed them, not having to clothe them, their living quarters would be less crowded, a little more room for the rest of the family. Then as these youth reached the country side and were greeted by  barefooted farm workers, instead of soldiers, and upon seeing their new homes, which were one story bungalows with no electric lights, instead of what they had envisioned as military type dormitories, with telephones. Upon realization set in that they had been tricked, as they were given heavy manual work, the now poor youth had to fight back, and wanted to go home. The sent down youth now regressed to stealing chickens, and they did not seem to think this was wrong, which to an extent it wasn’t because of the mere fact that they had been lied to. And the false pretenses of all of the wonderful things they were promised, seemed to fade in their eyes. They did not care anymore; they just wanted to go home and be home. This was such an excellent reading, as the reader catches a glimpse of life and of the realities that these sent down youth had to go through and endure. It is a good thing that these youth persevered and lived long enough to talk about it and do something about it, all the while still being able to hold their heads up high, and keep going forward, a true sign of one’s virtue.

     During the "Cultural Revolution" many of China's people were encouraged by Chairman Mao to join the "Up to the Mountains, Down to the Countryside Movement."  The economy was weak and not generating many jobs.  The propaganda pictures that were shown only displayed happy faces of people who were eager to go.  As a result, there were many volunteers that went willingly.  When these individuals who were know as the sent-down youth arrived to the countryside the novelty of being on an adventure wore off.  The difference in diet was huge.  The portions were only 40 llbs of rice and 2 ounces of protein per month.   They were also quite surprised to see their new housing.  Their new lives in the countryside were not what they thought it was going to be.  According to Profesor Dube in his lecture, the three main reasons why they were encouraged or forced to go to the countryside were due to the lack of jobs and education. Second, this would help in the processof purifying and re-educating China's population.  Lastly it was seen as a way to pacify the cities.  The result was that by the end of 1979, the majority of the sent-down youth returned to the city. After having lost their youth they moved back to live an urban life that they were completely unfamiliar with.  This sounds like a tragic life story to me.  It appears to me to be quite unusual that a group of people be sent away to be reducated.  The concept of "going away" for such a long period of time and to then be brought back into urban society merely to benefit the economy is an unacceptable way of governance.  The propaganda that was shown was deceitful and I believe that the sent-down youth were robbed of a different type of life that they should have been able to choose.

Everyone had such great responses to this session that I did not know who to reply to. As there were many and I do/did not have time to answer to every one. So I will condense my reading reflections’ into just one, “Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside”, but first I must say that this session was an excellent one. I will say that the reading of the sent down youth was superb, as it told of the students feelings and emotions of what they felt when they realized that what they were promised, was not what they were going to  get. I cannot get over this reading as it is one of the best readings ever from this seminar, aside from the Emperor Qianlong: Letter to George III. But I stand corrected, all the articles are good readings on the different topics, but the ones I am mentioning here are the ones THAT I THOROUGHLY ENJOYED, like the ones from Lu Xun.

However, going back to the Sent Down Youth, it is and was sad that the youth were betrayed, but the irony of this situation is as the youth were leaving to go up to the mountain side, in every single picture/video clip of this event, all the youth were smiling and happy, they were jazzed that they were going to experience new and good things, that they were going to benefit from this worthy trip up the mountains. But sadly they didn’t. It would be a really good thing to have a guest speaker that lived through this unfortunate time to talk to us and tell us what is was really like, like what they do at the Museum of Tolerance, maybe in the near future and for future seminars, this could somehow be arranged.