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Back to the City: The Return of Shanghai's Educated Youth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Thomas B. Gold
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Extract

Bands of young men took to the streets of Shanghai in late 1978, shouting slogans, vandalizing stores, putting up wall posters, imprisoning municipal officials in their offices and disrupting rail traffic. To many Shanghainese, it was déjà vu, a replay of Red Guard activities during the Cultural Revolution (CR), and small wonder, as the participants were those same youths who had rampaged through the city and then foresworn the urban security of Shanghai to go up to the mountains and down to the countryside to build socialism. Now, a decade later, disillusioned, alienated, in dire economic straits, unmarried and abandoned, they had ridden a “back to the city wind” and were determined to stay.

Type
Report from China
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 84 , December 1980 , pp. 755 - 770
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1980

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References

1. Liberation Daily (Jiefang ribao) (Shanghai), 15 12 1978Google Scholar.

2. Wen Hui Buo(Shanghai), 20 01 1979Google Scholar.

3. This description is based on Mclaren, Anne, “The Educated Youth Return”, The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, 07 1979, No. 2. p. 6CrossRefGoogle Scholarand her private notes.

4. Liberation Daily, 5 January 1979.

5. Ibid. 11 February 1979.

6. China Youth Newspaper (Zhongguo Qingnian Bad) (Beijing), 13 02 1979Google Scholar.

7. Wen Hui Bao, 14 March 1979.

8. Liberation Daily, 26 January 1979.

9. See Mclaren, , The Educated Youth Return, pp. 5–8Google Scholarfor details on Teng Husheng.

10. The following description comes from Liberation Daily, 11 February 1979.

11. Wen Hui Bao, 12 December 1979.

12. Liberation Daily, 17 February 1979.

13. Ibid. 15 February 1979.

14. Ibid. 7 February 1979.

15. Ibid. 28 February 1979.

16. According to a participant, these were the ability to return to Shanghai: (1) if your parents are deceased; (2) if one parent is deceased and one retired; (3) if there is more than one child in the countryside, only one can return; (4) if you are the child of a PLA soldier or martyr; (5) if you are a direct relation of an Overseas Chinese; (6) if there are special circumstances. The youth were insisting they fell into the last category by reason of extreme hardship.

17. These are: (1) Leadership of the CCP; (2) The socialist road; (3) Marxism, Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought as the theoretical basis; (4) Dictatorship of the proletariat.

18. Wen Hui Bao, 6 May 1979.

19. Ibid. 22 October 1979.

20. Ibid. 30 August 1979.

21. Liberation Daily, 14 January 1979.

22. Wen Hui Bao, 1 March 1979.

23. For more information, see McLaren, , The Educated Youth Return, p. 9Google Scholar.

24. Wen Hui Bao, 6 June 1979.

25. Ibid. 23 December 1979.

26. Ibid. 27 September 1979 and 30 October 1979.

27. Ibid. 25 November 1979.

28. Ibid. 2 June 1979.

29. Ibid. 20 December 1979.

30. Ibid. 15 November 1979.

31. Ibid. 7 July 1979, 19 May 1979, 8 June 1979.

32. Ibid. 19 February 1979.

33. Ibid. 5 December 1979.

34. Ibid. 20 May 1979.