Page 25 - C.A.L.L. #38 - Summer 2014
P. 25
Filled with nostalgia for an era they never experienced, admirers
of Chairman Mao have set up a commune where young Chinese can
escape the pressures of capitalism
By Malcolm Moore, Righteous Path farm, Dingxing County, Hebei
The Daily Telegraph - 24 Apr 2014
Down at the Righteous Path farm, a the land and unable to complete their
gangly city kid wearing a Red Army hat education.
dug his shovel awkwardly but
enthusiastically into a huge pile of pig China has spent the last three decades
manure. reversing course: unleashing a free
market and allowing hundreds of millions
of people to move from the
countryside to power the
booming economy of its cities.
But for 46-year-old Han
Deqiang, one of the leading
figures in a current revival of
Mao’s ideology, and his
students, it is time to turn
back to the land.
With roughly 30 university
students and recent graduates,
Students eat together, serving themselves from large metal
Mr Han has reincarnated the
bowls of the food they grow
communist collective farm.
“We love this job. We fight to be picked
to do it!” called out another member of “We call ourselves the New Educated
his production brigade. Youth because that was a very
important social concept,” he explained.
The farm, which comprises 30 acres of “The students were sent out to
rich soil on the plains of Hebei, is an strengthen the bond with normal
attempt to recreate an era that many workers and the countryside. What we
Chinese are still trying to forget: when are doing now is quite similar.”
Chairman Mao sent 18 million students
and intellectuals out of the cities to Each morning, his students rise at
work the fields. 6.15am for a brisk half-hour of
exercise, followed by a hearty
Today the “Educated Youth”, as they breakfast of rice porridge and steamed
were known, are sometimes called buns.
China’s lost generation, scattered across
Students eat together, serving
themselves from large metal bowls of
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