Da Jilu/en/Band 2

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The Great Report — Volume 2

“When I went to Hong Kong,” Liang recalled, “my wife told me, 'What I fear most is that you'll lose your integrity. If you do, divorce me at once.' Of course, I never lost it. Any cadre sent overseas with even a drop of hot blood in his veins wasn't chasing the so-called 'four big items'—the material comforts of television, refrigerator, washing machine, and tape recorder that had become symbols of prosperity. We only wanted to hold our heads high.”

He paused, then added, “When I first arrived, I'd see news reports every night of illegal border crossers in handcuffs—long lines of them—and sometimes bodies floating in the sea. We couldn't bear to watch. We'd turn off the TV. Our country's development back then wasn't going well. Even the children of some overseas cadres who grew up in Hong Kong looked down on us—it was painful. So I completely understand Yuan Geng's drive for reform. He said, 'The reason I'm doing this is to fulfill the original purpose for which I joined the Party.'“

His words left me silent for a long moment. Then he summed it up simply: “Among all the people I've known, there are two truly hot-blooded men—one is my wife's father, Liu Rentao; the other is Yuan Geng.”

What a phrase—hot-blooded men. It captured them perfectly, and the comparison was apt. I was deeply moved; it felt as if I had glimpsed the clearest path into Yuan Geng's inner world.

By coincidence, I knew Liu Rentao well. Twenty years my senior, he was both an elder I admired and a friend despite the age gap. One of China's foremost ophthalmologists, he had served as director of the Shanghai Labor Hospital in the early years of the Republic and had fitted Marshal Liu Bocheng with an artificial eye. Later, after writing the film script Peace Dove, he switched careers and became a screenwriter.

During the Cultural Revolution, he was falsely accused of being a “historical counterrevolutionary” at the Pearl River Film Studio, beaten so badly that five of his ribs were broken, and imprisoned.

While serving under supervised labor at the Yingde “May Seventh Cadre School,” he once met a peasant woman who had gone blind from cataracts. Though he had no surgical instruments and was himself under political persecution, he resolved to operate using nothing but a razor blade. Friends tried to stop him: “If you fail,” they warned, “they'll call it class revenge—you'll be sent back to prison.” He refused to listen—and succeeded. “In saving her sight as a doctor,” he later said, “I also redeemed my own soul.”

Now in his seventies, he has pledged to donate his corneas to the Zhongshan Medical College eye bank after his death and still travels tirelessly across the country, campaigning for the creation of schools for the blind.

Liu Rentao and Yuan Geng lived completely different lives, yet the same passionate blood ran in their veins. Both had unclouded hearts and an unshakable spirit of dedication. Through the Liu Rentao I knew, I began to imagine the Yuan Geng I had not yet met—and in that imagining, I felt I had already begun to understand him.

3. Adventurer

For Liu Rentao, performing cataract surgery on a blind peasant woman with nothing but a razor blade under the dictatorship's watch took immense courage. Yet the risks Yuan Geng faced in Shekou were even greater. Only two years earlier, some had published veiled newspaper critiques of the Special Economic Zones, warning that such experiments courted disaster.

But times had changed. These reforms were unfolding under the direct leadership of the Party's Central Committee. On February 9, 1983, General Secretary Hu Yaobang visited the Shekou Industrial Zone. During that inspection, Yuan Geng spoke to him candidly, and the two shared a remarkable conversation.

Yuan Geng: When it comes to reform, what we need now is comprehensive reform. Looking back through history, reformers have rarely met good ends. Over two thousand years ago, Shang Yang was executed—torn apart by five horses—for his reforms. Wang Anshi's reforms ended in failure. Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao sought only a constitutional monarchy—moderate reformism—and yet six of their followers were executed. Even Sun Yat-sen's reforms met defeat. But this time, I believe we won't share their fate. We are carrying out reform under the Party's leadership. There should be no problem. It's a risk worth taking.

Hu Yaobang: In the past, reforms were pushed from below by a few individuals, while those in power worked to suppress them. Now it's different—the leadership itself is calling for reform and urging change from the grassroots up. That makes all the difference.

Yuan Geng: I feel that our cadres aren't afraid of the masses—they're afraid of their superiors. They worry that if those above them disapprove, they'll lose their positions. Take me, for instance. Every time I arrive in Shekou, I'm greeted at the dock by crowds of subordinates anxious not to overlook a single courtesy. If I'm not careful, I could easily become complacent. Over time, one stops fearing the people or one's subordinates—after all, they can't remove you from office. But I still fear the Ministry of Communications, fear my direct superiors—because only they can.

That's why public supervision of officials—giving the people the right to elect and dismiss their leaders—is crucial. We want to make Shekou a testing ground for this. The management committee should be elected by the people, with annual votes of confidence. If more than half express no confidence, the entire committee must be re-elected; if a single member receives a majority of no-confidence votes, that person must step down.

A leadership team chosen directly by the people will think as the people think and care about what they care about. Once some officials gain power, gifts and flattery begin to pour in. If they're not clear-headed and lack self-discipline, corruption follows. Many pretend to understand what they don't. But if the masses have both the right to elect and the right to supervise, I believe it will transform not only our leadership structure but also our work style. This is a serious reform—and we're prepared to take the risks it requires.

Hu Yaobang: (nodding) Good. Very good.

Yuan Geng: The General Secretary says it's good—then we'll record this and submit it in our next report.

Hu Yaobang: (smiling as he stood) We once had a great dramatist, Guan Hanqing, who satirized corrupt officials. But he didn't dare curse them directly, so instead he mocked the drum used to open court sessions. There's a line: “A big tree hollow inside, both ends stretched tight like bark—beaten three times daily in court: dong, dong, dong! Dong, dong, dong! They still don't understand the irony!”

Everyone laughed.

That day, the General Secretary of the Party and the Party Secretary of the Shekou Industrial Zone spoke with one voice and shared one conviction. Their exchange should be remembered as a milestone in Shekou's history.

On April 24, 1983, elections produced the new Shekou Industrial Zone Management Committee. A year later, on April 22, 1984, the scheduled confidence vote was held. Was such voting truly necessary?

Yu Dehai, director of the Organization Department, admitted: “Even I hesitated. The results of a confidence vote have to be honored—those who fail to win majority support must step down. I wondered whether we should just hold a simple opinion survey instead. But Chairman Yuan insisted: we must have a real vote of confidence.”

The results spoke for themselves. Every committee member secured majority confidence, and Yuan Geng received the strongest support. That evening, the ballots were made public. Even blunt criticisms—”so-and-so is incompetent,” “so-and-so cannot be trusted”—were laid bare. Nothing was concealed.

Among all the reforms launched in Shekou, this was the most significant of all.

4. “If They Won't Let Go, I'll Resign!”

Elections to select leadership teams and the introduction of regular confidence votes were not impulsive experiments but carefully thought-out reforms conceived by Yuan Geng. He was convinced that without transforming the cadre system—without changing how officials were selected, promoted, and held accountable—no meaningful reform could take root. The “Four Modernizations” of China would remain little more than slogans.

At the time, the problem of bureaucratic stagnation was painfully evident.

Some senior officials asked visiting scholars from Cambridge University, “How large are the bridges your university builds?”

Others asked American guests, “Since the British speak English, what language do you Americans speak?”

One cadre, reporting his “lessons learned” from a Hong Kong visit, proudly declared, “My thinking has made a 360-degree turn!”

Such absurdities were both laughable and tragic. How could officials so limited in knowledge and imagination shoulder the task of national modernization?

Even in Shekou's earliest days—when the zone was still focused on the “five connections and one leveling” (bringing in water, electricity, roads, gas, and communications, and flattening the land)—Yuan Geng was already looking ahead. With barely twenty cadres in the command post, he began to think seriously about how to train a new generation of young, educated, and forward-thinking administrators.

In 1981, despite resistance, he decided to launch a new training program for enterprise management cadres, recruiting university graduates in science and engineering from across China. “I'm an adventurer,” Yuan said. “For Shekou's reform, I've gathered a group of small adventurers from around the country.”

At that time, Shekou lacked the personnel to conduct national recruitment on its own. The task was therefore entrusted to the Information Office of the Ministry of Communications' Communications Science Institute, which organized the first round of exams in Wuhan. The first candidate to step into the exam room was Wang Chaoliang, an engineer from the Yangtze River Navigation Research Institute's Ship Structure Division.

Wang was born in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, in 1938. He graduated from Northwestern Polytechnical University with a degree in aircraft design in 1960. As early as 1958, he had begun experimenting with hovercraft air-cushion principles—using foreign reference materials—and even built a working prototype with classmates on Peking University's Weiming Lake. At the time, Britain's hovercraft research was barely six months ahead. Yet in an era when “steel production” was prized above scientific innovation, the efforts of a few young researchers were doomed to neglect.

After graduation, Wang was assigned to the design office of an aircraft factory, where production orders came directly from resident military representatives who trusted only Soviet blueprints. “Certain propellers must use Ural wood; sand casting must use Ukrainian sand,” they insisted. “Even if China has better materials, substitutions are forbidden.” Frustrated but powerless, Wang spent seventeen years designing aircraft, only to watch China's aviation industry fall behind even India's. He devoted four years to hovercraft research without ever seeing one launched. His ambition curdled into disillusionment.

When a chance arose to send one engineer to West Germany for technical inspection, the position went not to him but to the department head's daughter—who lacked the qualifications. Then one day he saw a newspaper advertisement for Shekou Industrial Zone's enterprise management training program. The words electrified him. “Shekou is a place where ability determines success,” he thought. “I'm going.” He carefully cut out the advertisement and pasted it into his notebook as a vow.

He was the first to enter the exam room—and the first to finish. Both his written and oral scores were exceptional. Lin Hongci, director of the Information Office, was impressed. “This is real talent,” he said. “He's accepted.”

But one obstacle remained. In China, a peculiar contradiction still prevailed: the means of production belonged to the people, yet officials themselves were treated as the property of their work units. A single office or bureau could hold onto a person for life, stifling their ambitions and preventing them from ever moving elsewhere.

The Yangtze River Navigation Research Institute refused to release Wang. In November 1981, Yuan Geng was hospitalized in Guangzhou. Lin Hongci visited him at the Guangdong Provincial Hospital's East Wing to report on the recruitment progress—and raised Wang Chaoliang's case.

Yuan immediately grew animated. “Is Comrade Wang a Party member?”

“No.”

“That makes things simpler,” Yuan said, his eyes alight. “Let's see if he has the courage to set a precedent. If they refuse to let him go, he can resign—and I'll take him in myself. At worst, they'll complain and take this all the way up to the State Council. So be it. I only need one or two brave comrades to break this barrier. When the complaints reach Beijing, we'll state the facts openly. I'm sure the central leadership will stand behind us. Even Zeng Tao from Xinhua has said it—we must end this so-called 'private ownership of cadres.' The waste of talent is intolerable. People's skills lie idle in one unit, and yet they're forbidden to move. This cannot go on.”

Moved by Yuan's resolve, Lin Hongci wrote to Wang Chaoliang, relaying every word of their conversation while continuing to press his case through every possible channel. In the end, Wang didn't need to resign, his unit finally relented and released him.

In 1982, Wang Chaoliang arrived in Shekou, marking not only the beginning of his own transformation but also a quiet victory for Yuan Geng's daring experiment in reform.

5. Enterprise Management Graduate Student

One evening in December 1982, a man in his thirties arrived at Yuan Geng's home in Beijing's Xiyuan compound. The meeting had been arranged in advance. The visitor, Yu Changmin, was a recent graduate of Tsinghua University's first Enterprise Management program.

Yu had originally completed his undergraduate degree in automation from Tsinghua's Department of Electrical Engineering in 1970. After nearly a decade in the workforce, he had grown acutely aware of China's deep-rooted problems in enterprise management. In 1979, he returned to Tsinghua for graduate study, and a year later went to Japan to research Japanese management practices. His research drew attention there—Yomiuri Shimbun even ran a feature on him, complete with photographs.

Now, newly graduated, Yu faced a choice. The university suggested he join the China Enterprise Research Association under the State Economic Commission—a prestigious, secure post. But his wife worked in Wuhan, and transferring her to Beijing seemed impossible.

Just then, word of Shekou's reforms reached him. Each week he bought the Shenzhen Special Zone Daily, poring over every issue, treasuring an early Investment Guide that he studied like a secret manual. It was clear to him: Shekou was where China's future was taking shape.

He decided—he would go south. The department supported his choice, and when Yuan Geng came to Beijing for meetings, Yu arranged, through a mutual friend, to meet him.

At first sight, the two men sized each other up.

So this is the famous reformer Yuan Geng? Yu thought. He looks nothing like the image I'd imagined—just an ordinary old cadre in a cotton jacket. His education isn't said to be high either… is it really worth following him?

The thought flickered and was gone. Yuan Geng was already pouring tea and inviting him to sit.

“What do you think,” Yuan began, “is the most fatal problem in China's economy?”

“The system,” Yu answered without hesitation.

“Exactly!” Yuan's face lit up. “A Shanghai shipyard director once complained to me that he needed a thousand workers, but the Labor Department sent him only three hundred capable ones—the rest were deadweight. If he asked for more, they'd just assign more useless people. Everyone eats from the same big pot, muddling along, and they call that the superiority of socialism! Factories swell with redundant staff until they become miniature societies where the lazy exploit the diligent. It corrodes our national character! Without reforming this system, we have no way forward.”

Yu nodded. “In one of my papers, I raised the issue of enterprise quality.”

“Oh?” Yuan leaned forward. “What insights do you have?”

“Quality,” Yu said, “is like basic conditioning. It's what gives a team strength—like how the women's volleyball team developed its own style, and from that came fighting power.”

Yuan's eyes gleamed. “Let's compare an enterprise to a ball team. Suppose you're the coach, and someone starts assigning players to you at random. What would you do?”

“I wouldn't take them.”

“But you can't refuse.”

“Then I wouldn't coach.”

Yuan slapped the table, beaming. “Exactly! That's what I wanted to hear. You mean management should have the right to choose its people—and people should have the right to choose their management. That's what we call two-way selection. That's the direction of reform!”

Their conversation flowed late into the night. By the end, Yuan Geng had found his man, and Yu Changmin had found his cause. The two men quickly found themselves kindred spirits. Whatever hesitation Yu had felt dissolved completely.

“We'll have to take some risks,” Yuan said.

“That's exactly why I want to go,” Yu replied. “What would be the point if everything were already built?”

“Do you have any personal requests?”

“Only that my family can come with me.”

“We'll arrange it.”

Two months later, Yu's father passed away, and he returned home for the funeral. In his absence, Tsinghua's attitude shifted—the department wanted to keep him. The Enterprise Management Department was still new and badly needed faculty. Their reasoning was sound, but Yu's heart had already gone south with Yuan Geng to Shekou.

In March 1983, Yuan invited Tsinghua University's president, Liu Da, to visit Shekou. The department sent Yu to accompany the delegation, hoping the trip would persuade the president to keep him in Beijing while resolving his family's registration issues.

But events took an unexpected turn. As soon as the group arrived, Yuan Geng asked whether Yu's transfer had been approved. Yu hinted that President Liu still needed convincing.

“President,” Yu said, “please let me go to Shekou.”

“The department asked me to help keep you,” Liu Da replied. “And I promised I would.”

Yuan pressed gently but firmly. “Comrade Liu Da, please—lend us this young man. Shekou urgently needs specialists in enterprise management.”

Liu Da was moved. A veteran of the December 9th Movement and once Minister of Forestry, famed for his defense of intellectuals in 1957, he fully understood both Shekou's importance and Yuan and Yu's determination. Yet he had to respect the department's authority. He promised to discuss the matter after returning to Beijing.

Back at Tsinghua, Yu submitted a formal report thanking the university for its training and explaining why graduates from the new Enterprise Management Department needed to participate directly in Shekou's construction—it was essential, he wrote, for both national reform and the department's future research.

The matter was soon resolved. By July, transfer procedures for Yu and his wife were complete.

When Yu reported to the Shekou Industrial Zone offices, Yuan Geng happened to meet him at the entrance. He clasped Yu's hand warmly, walking him toward the elevator.

“You study enterprise management,” Yuan said as they walked. “First get familiar with things here—once you understand the situation, we'll talk about your work.”

Later, Yuan wrote a personal letter of thanks to President Liu Da, including these lines:

Regarding Comrade Yu's transfer, everyone here deeply admires your selfless spirit. Tsinghua's loss of one Little Yu does no harm to the whole, but Shekou's gain is like adding wings to a tiger. Watching Tsinghua's students spread across the world, the Industrial Zone will surely benefit from this.

The sentimental Liu Da gave the letter to Yu Changmin as a keepsake—a small, tangible link between the academy he left behind and the frontier he was helping to forge.

6. Sunday Morning

At eight o'clock on a quiet Sunday morning, Gu Liji had just gotten up, washed his face, and was making instant noodles. His four roommates were still fast asleep. Saturday nights meant late lights-out, so everyone had stayed up. He moved quietly, careful not to make a sound.

“Excuse me, does Comrade Gu Liji live here?” came a voice from outside the door.

Gu looked up to see a gray-haired man in his sixties and a young woman standing in the corridor.

“I'm Gu Liji. And you are…?”

“I'm Yuan Geng—from Shekou.” The old man extended his hand. “This is my daughter, Niya. She worried about my health and insisted on coming along, though I'm perfectly fine. Look—I rode my bicycle here for half an hour. It was quite pleasant.”

Gu was stunned. The famous Yuan Geng, in person—at the Tsinghua University dormitory?

He was deeply moved. “Let's talk downstairs,” he said quickly. “My classmates are still asleep.”

They found a bench under the morning sun. The May air was mild, the breeze soft, the campus quiet.

“I heard,” Yuan began, “that you organized an Enterprise Management Enthusiasts Association?”

“Yes,” said Gu. “We now have over a thousand members. Liu Da and Yu Guangyuan both attended the founding meeting.”

“I also heard you said you wanted to be a factory director.”

Gu laughed. “Your information is well-informed. I did say that once—and it got me into a bit of trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Some people said I was being ambitious.”

“Ridiculous!” Yuan said, striking his knee. “What kind of ambition is that? 'A soldier who doesn't wish to be a general is not a good soldier'—was that Napoleon, or someone else? What's wrong with a student wanting to be a factory director?”

“I study computer science,” Gu said, “but I think China needs management talent even more, so I've been auditing all the graduate courses in enterprise management.”

“Come to Shekou,” Yuan said immediately. “We're running a training program for enterprise management cadres. We need people like you.”

“I saw a video about Shekou last November,” Gu said. “I was really moved, but I hadn't made up my mind.”

“And now?”

“Now I've decided. I'm going to Shekou.”

“Good! We welcome you. Any difficulties?”

There were, of course. In the early summer of 1982, criticism of the Shenzhen Special Zone still lingered. Some newspapers compared it to the old foreign concessions, warning that it might become “a new concession in disguise.” Such comments created invisible pressure, and many whispered that “the Special Zone's future is uncertain.” But Gu Liji didn't care. He wanted to work alongside people like Yuan Geng. Taking risks was worth it.

Shanghai factories had invited him to return, offering a choice of managerial posts in subsidiary plants—a tempting offer. He had joined the Shanghai Dyeing Machinery Repair Factory right after middle school in 1968, working for ten years as a boiler operator, lathe worker, miller, fitter, electrician, and Youth League secretary.

In 1974, when the factory was controlled by rebel groups loyal to Wang Hongwen, Gu had openly quarreled with them and been criticized for it, but the workers had supported him. After the fall of the Gang of Four, he was rehabilitated and placed in charge of the factory's materials group. Had he not gone to university, he would likely already be in leadership. Returning to Shanghai would mean stability—and no shortage of opportunities.

But Shekou, with all its uncertainty, called to him more strongly than the familiar comfort of home.

The real difficulty lay elsewhere: his mother and wife opposed his leaving Shanghai. The family had a spacious apartment, and with his sisters living elsewhere, his mother hoped he would stay close. His wife's attachment to Shanghai was equally understandable.

“I'll have to persuade my mother and my wife,” Gu admitted with an embarrassed smile.

Yuan nodded, fully understanding. He admired the young man's resolve and grew animated as he spoke.

“Your choice is the right one. Shekou has enormous potential. Do you know why we chose to build an industrial zone there? To reform everything—from enterprise management and personnel systems to wages. Without reform, there's no way out. For thirty years, ultra-left thinking and rigid systems have held us back.

“When we first arrived in Shekou in early 1979, bodies of people who had tried to swim to Hong Kong were still washing ashore—all young people. Do you know why they fled? Because they were poor. The Gang of Four promoted 'political border defense,' but the more politics they imposed, the more people escaped. In some villages, nearly all the young adults had left. It was heartbreaking.

“Shekou faces Yuen Long in Hong Kong—just six kilometers apart. On clear days, you can see their tall buildings, built during our 'ten years of chaos.' We can't go on like that. We must develop the economy, and to do that, we have to reform.

“The Shekou Industrial Zone is only 2.14 square kilometers—a drop in the ocean compared with the nation's 9.6 million. But if we succeed, it will have significance for the whole country. And even if we fail, it's still just a drop in the ocean—it won't hurt the nation. Of course, we must do everything we can to succeed.

“Our generation is already old. By the time we realized we had to accomplish something, there wasn't much time left. So we place our hope in you…”

As Yuan spoke, Gu felt his blood quicken, his body grow warm.

Beside them, Niya, who had remained silent until then, looked at her father with shining eyes.

7. The Press Conference

 After graduating from the management training program, Gu Liji worked for a time as secretary of the Industrial Zone office before being appointed director in April 1984.

That July, I returned to Guangzhou on business before Yuan Geng's arrival. When I came back to Shekou on August 5, I heard that Gu was leaving for Hong Kong the following morning. That evening, I went to see him.

“Yuan Geng just returned to Hong Kong,” Gu told me as soon as we met. “He'll be back in Shekou tomorrow afternoon. At 7:30 p.m., he's giving a talk at the club auditorium. I'm delaying my trip by a day just to hear it. It's open to the public—you should come too.”

“Could you arrange a time for me to speak with him?” I asked.

Gu smiled. “I'm afraid that's difficult. He never stays long when he's here—too many matters to handle. After tomorrow's talk, your best chance is to walk with him afterward, maybe to his son's home or to the hotel. You might get ten or fifteen minutes that way.”

I couldn't help feeling a little disappointed. Was Yuan Geng really that hard to reach? Still, I decided at least to attend the lecture.

At 7:30 p.m. on August 6, Yuan Geng's report began precisely on time.

The club auditorium—usually used for film screenings or large meetings—had been converted into a press venue, with posters announcing the event along the streets. The hall, which could hold more than a thousand people, was nearly full. Looking around, I saw a sea of youthful, eager faces. On the stage sat Yuan Geng and Xiong Bingquan, the Hong Kong China Merchants Group's Development Department manager who had traveled abroad with him. Gu Liji served as host.

Yuan Geng began with a smile, waving two sheets of paper in his hand.

“Don't worry, everyone—this will take only about an hour.”

The audience laughed, though many secretly hoped he'd speak longer.

“This trip lasted twenty-three days,” Yuan began, “covering four countries, sixteen companies, and eighteen cities. We started in Singapore, went west to Britain, then to the United States and Japan—completing a full circle around the globe. Everywhere we went, we received an exceptional welcome. In my years as a diplomat, I was never treated so warmly abroad. Of course, it wasn't because they valued the four of us personally, but because of the transformation taking place at China Merchants Group and in the Shekou Industrial Zone. Everyone here shares in that honor. I deeply feel the pride of being a Shekou person.”

Yuan had long insisted that official visits abroad should be funded with one's own resources. “If you spend other people's money,” he liked to say, “you lose the upper hand in negotiations.” For this trip, they carried credit cards worth 200,000 U.S. dollars—enough to cover all expenses. They maintained this rule everywhere—except in Singapore, where it proved impossible.

Though China and Singapore had not yet established diplomatic relations, the Singaporean authorities were exceedingly cordial. The delegation was exempted from customs checks, escorted directly from the airport to the luxurious Shangri-La Hotel, where Yuan was given the “Presidential Suite”—previously occupied by Margaret Thatcher and later by U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz. The daily rate was equivalent to 5,000 Hong Kong dollars. Every request was accommodated. But when they tried to settle the bill before departure, the hotel manager smiled and said, “Before you arrived, someone had already paid for everything.”

From there they visited Aberdeen, the logistics base for Britain's North Sea oil fields. Despite an ongoing seamen's strike, British executives received them with exceptional courtesy. What impressed Yuan most, however, were the endless roses blooming across northern England.

“We had originally planned to plant 200,000 roses in Shekou within three years,” he said. “Now I think that number is far too modest.”

The highlight of the trip was the United States, where the delegation aimed to sign contracts to introduce a float glass factory. In Pittsburgh, the Chamber of Commerce made Yuan an honorary member. In Montreal, the city's Chinese-American mayor, Li Caizhuo, presented him with an honorary citizenship and a golden key, saying, “I am one hundred percent Chinese and one hundred percent American.” Yuan smiled and replied, “I deeply admire her words.”

Negotiations, however, were far from simple. As Yuan later told his staff, “In business, even brothers can be ruthless. Family ties don't count—let alone when you're dealing with foreigners.”

Before appreciating Yuan's diplomacy, one must understand the obstacles he had already faced at home. Speaking to the third enterprise management training class on March 22, 1984, he cautioned that reform was still far from secure. The Central Committee had just issued new directives on March 10, and while many were delighted, Yuan warned against premature celebration. Problems, he said, did not vanish simply because higher authorities spoke: open opposition might have faded, but bureaucracy, jealousy, and petty sabotage persisted.

He cited the float glass project as an example. Negotiations for its approval had stalled despite clear national benefit. “China imports vast quantities of glass each year,” he told the class. “Why shouldn't we use the most advanced technology to replace those imports? We sent two capable women to the Building Materials Bureau, and at first the officials readily agreed. But when our office later sent staff with the contract for signature, they rejected it outright. When asked why, they said, 'You brought reporters and writers—how could I refuse then? If it went wrong, you'd write about it, and I'd be in trouble!'“

It took nine months for the project to clear this domestic hurdle. Negotiating with the Americans would not take as long—but the struggle would prove far more intense.

The American float glass factory was a technological marvel, practically a “glass city.” It could produce every kind of glass, including a tempered type that could withstand a 25-pound hammer dropped from twenty meters. The floor would shake, but the glass remained unbroken.

Shekou planned to establish a joint venture with the American company, investing 100 million dollars to import the same factory and purchase its patents, allowing them to build future plants independently. The debate centered on patent royalties: the Americans demanded six percent of annual sales; Yuan's side offered four. The Americans lowered to five; Yuan raised to four and a half. Negotiations stalled.

At last, Yuan spoke.

“Gentlemen,” he began, “our ancestors invented the compass four thousand years ago and gunpowder two thousand years ago. The whole world benefits from these great inventions, yet we never demanded patent fees. We don't call our ancestors fools—we take pride in them. Tell me, where were your ancestors then? Still in the trees, perhaps? Take a look at your chests—are they particularly hairy?”

The Americans glanced down, chuckling.

“But don't be afraid,” Yuan continued, smiling. “I'm not saying we shouldn't pay royalties. I'm saying only that they must be fair.”

It was classic Yuan Geng—bold, humorous, disarming. The Americans appreciated his candor, and the deadlock broke. They settled at 4.75 percent for ten years—a remarkably good deal, given that another Chinese city had agreed to pay five percent for twelve years for a less advanced British plant.

Concluding his report, Yuan's voice rose with conviction.

“America gathers both the best and worst of the world. We must learn from its strengths—but we must never follow its path. The global economy is declining, industries are reorganizing. Five years ago, when I last traveled abroad, there was still vitality. Now there is stagnation. Some say the world's economic center will shift eastward to the Pacific Rim by the late 1980s.

“Our old system made people lazy—but it's changing. As I stepped off the boat at Shekou's dock at 4:30 this afternoon, circling the globe behind me, I felt invigorated. Every blade of grass looked dear to me.

“On October First, Shekou's float will pass before Tiananmen Square. If it moves the crowd, that will be everyone's achievement.

“The capitalist world is rich in material things but poor in spirit. We are rising. We must catch up—and then surpass them.”

He spoke for an hour and a half. When he finally ended, the audience still wasn't ready to leave. As Yuan Geng exited, a crowd pressed forward to surround him. I stood aside, abandoning my plan to follow.

8. “What Conspiracy Are You Plotting?”

On August 7, Yuan Geng was in meetings all day. Word had it that the 8th would be just as busy and that he would return to Hong Kong early on the 9th. I no longer expected to see him before he left. That evening, I wrote him a letter explaining that if I couldn't speak with him this time, I would wait until his next return from Hong Kong. On the morning of the 8th, I gave the letter to Qiao Shengli, deputy secretary of the Industrial Zone Party Committee, and asked him to forward it.

Later that morning, while I was visiting Wang Chaoliang in the office building, Deputy Director Huang Zhenchao hurried in.

“Director Yuan is back—go see him quickly!”

I apologized to Wang, promising to reschedule, and followed Huang toward Yuan's office. The Industrial Zone office and Yuan's personal office were separated only by a glass partition. From a distance, I could see him holding a thick stack of documents. When we shook hands, Huang said, “Just a brief meeting—it won't take long.”

Yuan smiled. “You're from Huacheng, aren't you? What conspiracy are you plotting?”

His teasing instantly broke the ice, though I sensed a playful undertone behind the words. I knew Yuan had a deep interest in literature. Liang Xian once told me that years earlier, at a meeting in Beijing, Yuan had read Zhang Jie's story Love Must Not Be Forgotten and several essays about it, then asked, “Do you know this writer? Let's invite her to Shekou!” It seemed likely that Huacheng, the magazine I worked for, had caught his attention for similar reasons—and that his word “conspiracy” was meant in jest.

I smiled back. “It's an open conspiracy—to write about you and Shekou.”

He laughed and led me into a small reception room between the two offices. Settling comfortably into a rattan chair, he said,

“There's really nothing worth writing about me. Don't make it sound like everything here is perfect—there are plenty of problems. Reform is a struggle at every step, full of contradictions.”

“That's precisely what interests me,” I replied.

Yuan nodded. “A country without democracy can't function, and without giving people the right to supervise and recall their officials, there's no real democracy. We've reformed our cadre system. In other countries, when politicians speak, the public can throw rotten eggs or tomatoes at them. They hold up umbrellas and keep speaking. You might say their democracy is false, but even that helps sustain their system. We, under socialism, must have genuine democracy. Our bourgeois-democratic revolution was incomplete—Sun Yat-sen wanted democracy but died too soon to realize it. The Chinese nation is great, but its historical burdens are too heavy.”

At that moment, writer Huang Hongjiang entered and added, “I recently met a Central Committee official's daughter studying enterprise management in America. She said much the same thing—living there made her realize how heavy our nation's burdens are.”

“America has no such constraints,” Yuan replied. “I mentioned in my report their Governor cigarette slogan—'Just do it.' Even Hong Kong couldn't accept that; they translated it as 'Should do it, then do it.' Of course, doing whatever you want isn't right either, but here we can't even do what should be done.”

I asked about his background. He answered briefly, emphasizing his Party membership and his imprisonment during the Cultural Revolution. Without realizing it, we had talked for nearly an hour when Deputy Director Wang Jingui entered, smiling but silent. His presence was a signal: it was time for Yuan to move on to his next meeting.

Soon after, Huang telephoned Yuan's wife, Wang Zongqian, who was staying at the Prince Hotel. We went there immediately. Mrs. Wang, gentle and composed, spoke with us for an hour, mostly about Yuan's imprisonment. Her account gave a vivid sense of his life inside and outside the prison walls.

“Many people lost their spirit after such torment,” she said softly, “but not him. It only made him stronger.”

I thought to myself: That's Yuan Geng.

A few days later, Qiao Shengli told Chen Yihao, “Director Yuan read your letter and said he'll speak with you next time he returns.”

But before that could happen, Yuan was invited to Fujian by Comrade Xiang Nan.

On the morning of August 25, hearing that he had returned to Shekou, I hurried to call the Prince Hotel. It was too late—he was leaving for Hong Kong after noon, and his morning was already packed. Even while speaking to me, he had to pause to answer knocks at the door.

“Just ask your questions over the phone,” he said cheerfully. “No problem—we have no secrets.”

I hadn't prepared for a phone interview and could only think of a few factual questions about his recent overseas visit, which he answered patiently one by one.

“Will this also be published?” he asked.

“Not necessarily,” I said.

“That's fine,” he replied. “Even foreigners heard my speech that day.”

I asked, “When I prepare the proofs, may I send them for your review, just to avoid factual errors?”

“No need,” he said. “Don't bother with reviews. Small mistakes don't matter. People have flesh and blood—it's natural to make a few errors. A little trouble is fine too.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Thank you,” he replied.

I suddenly remembered two remarks of Yuan's that seemed to capture his entire spirit.

Once, he personally led a group of enterprise management trainees on a factory tour. Standing at the entrance of an aluminum plant, he told them that its construction had been contracted to a Japanese company. Twenty-three Japanese workers completed the entire facility in just twenty-seven days. They worked through heavy rain without pause. When one worker fell and was injured, his brother came, saw that the injury wasn't serious, and went straight back to work.

“Japan's prosperity,” Yuan said, “is perfectly understandable. With such discipline, how could they not become rich? And if China's reform were to fail, that would make no sense at all.”

Now, after everything I had seen, I could only add: Shekou's reform failing would make no sense either. 

9. Dapeng Spirit

At sixty-six, Yuan Geng stood tall and composed, his bearing a blend of a diplomat and an entrepreneur, his presence marked by quiet charisma. But who was this man, and where had he come from?

Brush away the fog of history, and a vivid figure begins to emerge—a man of conviction whose footprints trace a long and turbulent path. Yuan Geng was born in Shuiba Village, Dapeng Town, Bao'an County (now Longgang District, Shenzhen), Guangdong Province. His family owned an orchard and lived in modest comfort. The winds and waves of Dapeng Bay shaped his temperament: calm in bearing but restless in spirit.

In 1935, he graduated from Guangzhou's Guangya Middle School and later enrolled in a surveying institute. After a brief stint as a surveyor, he entered the Yantang Military Academy run by Chen Jitang. When Chen fell from power, the academy was absorbed into the Nationalist (Kuomintang) Central Military Academy. At school, Yuan was an energetic football goalkeeper, cultivating both a strong physique and a determined character.

After graduating, he grew disillusioned with what he saw: instructors who spoke of righteousness yet remained blind to the nation's peril. In anger, he returned to his hometown, where he became principal of Dapeng First Primary School and also helped organize local self-defense forces.

The school operated under the Kuomintang, the self-defense corps was aligned with Deng Yanda's Third Party, and yet both were infiltrated by members of the underground Communist Party. Yuan—returning in his military uniform, sword at his side—was a local figure of influence, admired by all three factions. Wang Wen, the Communist county secretary, even lodged in his home and quietly observed him. Shared patriotic ideals soon drew Yuan into the Party's orbit.

He worked closely with underground members Wang Wen, Zhong Wen, and Lai Zhongyuan, as well as teacher Wang Bai, a Party-trained activist. Together they organized night schools and performed anti-Japanese plays. During one performance of Put Down Your Whip, Wang Bai played the enslaved girl while Yuan took the role of the young man rushing to stop her father's cruelty. When he shouted, “Put down your whip!” he was so overcome by feeling that he forgot he was acting—his passion stirred the audience to rush forward with him.

On March 27, 1939, Yuan Geng formally joined the Chinese Communist Party, introduced by comrades Wang Wen and Zhong Wen. From that day forward, he never once disgraced the title of Party member.

At the time, a progressive local journal called Dapeng Spirit published his political cartoons satirizing the Kuomintang. His drawings infuriated the local Kuomintang office, and his safety quickly became precarious. The Party decided to transfer him to the anti-Japanese guerrilla forces later that year. In the winter of 1939, Yuan joined the East River Column, beginning a long career of armed struggle. The son of Dapeng Bay had taken flight.

During the Anti-Japanese War, American forces stationed observer groups both in Yan'an and with the East River Column. As director of the Column's Liaison Office, Yuan maintained regular contact with the U.S. Observer Group. Following directives from the Party Central Committee, the East River Column exchanged intelligence about Japanese military movements in South China with the Americans—cooperation that proved valuable to the Allied effort.

When Japan surrendered in 1945, British forces were still far away in Burma. A single rear admiral led barely a battalion aboard aircraft carriers to Hong Kong—too few to restore order. The British asked the East River Column's Hong Kong–Kowloon detachment to remain temporarily to maintain stability. The Column sought guidance from the Central Committee, which replied: to thwart the Kuomintang's plans for renewed civil war, all forces must withdraw from Hong Kong–Kowloon—but establish liaison offices there at once.

The East River Column sent Yuan Geng to handle the negotiations in Hong Kong. He completed the mission with distinction and became the first director of the Hong Kong Office—the forerunner of what would later become the Xinhua News Agency's Hong Kong Branch.

No one could have imagined that more than twenty years later, those same accomplishments would be branded as “crimes.”

10. Qincheng Prison

On the morning of April 6, 1968, Yuan Geng left his home in Xiyuan early for work. In Beijing, early April was raw and windy, the spring air thick with dust storms and the walls plastered with violent big-character posters. The city's atmosphere was tense and oppressive, and it weighed heavily on Yuan's spirit. He had just completed work receiving Indonesian Chinese refugees and barely had time to rest before returning to duty. Lately he had been hearing disturbing news—comrades from the old East River Column being detained or disappearing one after another. He concealed his anxiety beneath an appearance of calm.

Not long after arriving at the office, someone informed him: “The minister wants to see you.”

When Yuan entered, he saw not only the minister but also two public security officers. The minister—a man whose name often appeared in the newspapers—sat stiffly, his face as hard as carved wood.

“Yuan Geng,” he said, “you are under arrest.”

That afternoon, the ministry held an emergency meeting. The minister announced: “Yuan Geng has been legally arrested as an American spy.”

Among those present were his close friends and neighbors, Liu Yamin and Liu Danyi, who had served with him as consuls at the Chinese Consulate General in Jakarta during the 1950s. They exchanged looks of grief and outrage. Only a few years earlier, in 1954, Yuan had worked tirelessly to safeguard Premier Zhou Enlai during the Bandung Conference, traveling ceaselessly between Jakarta and Bandung, his eyes bloodshot, his body gaunt with exhaustion. To see such loyalty repaid with accusation—where was the justice?

That same day, Yuan's wife, Wang Zongqian, was escorted from her office to their home and ordered to hand over all keys for a search. The search lasted from afternoon until nightfall. When it ended, she was taken back to her workplace, where her desk was searched again. Returning home, she found her three children locked outside, forbidden to enter, with no neighbor daring to offer them shelter. The children wiped their tears in silence.

From that moment, Yuan Geng vanished. Wang Zongqian had no idea where he was held or whether he was even alive. Every inquiry met the same cold reply: “We don't know.”

In 1969, Wang was sent with her office to a cadre school in Zou County, Shandong, leaving the children in Beijing with their grandmother. Officially she was a “student,” but as the wife of a “counterrevolutionary,” she was assigned the dirtiest, hardest labor—cleaning latrines and carrying excrement. The strain left her with a frozen shoulder, so painful she could not lift her arm. When doctors recommended treatment in Beijing, the school refused permission.

Only in early summer 1972, when her eldest son Zhongyin was about to be sent to the countryside, was she granted leave to return home to prepare his things.

Then, in July 1972—four years and three months after Yuan's arrest—she suddenly received notice to visit him at Qincheng Prison.

“He's alive,” she thought, trembling. “He's alive!”

But when she saw him, her heart sank. Yuan struggled to walk, his voice was hoarse, and he no longer knew what year or month it was. In Qincheng, the lights were left on day and night; prisoners lost all sense of time. They were forced to sleep facing outward with one leg pressed under the other, causing muscle atrophy. Long silence left their voices rasping and thin. Yuan later joked lightly that he saw almost no living creatures in prison for years—only the occasional blade of grass during exercise.

When someone asked if that was true, he replied, “No—there were ants. I became quite an expert on ants.”

That small remark carried the weight of unspoken years.

After that visit, Wang began petitioning tirelessly for his release. “When I didn't know whether he was alive, I feared he might already be dead,” she later said. “But once I knew he lived, I began to fear he might die in there. If he died before his name was cleared, the children would bear that stain forever.”

She pleaded with officials to move him from the upper floor of his cell block—his legs were so weak that climbing stairs was agony. The authorities eventually agreed. When Yuan was moved downstairs, he noticed a strand of gray hair beneath the bedding. From it, he deduced that a woman in her fifties had once occupied the cell.

Later, at a banquet, he mentioned this to Wang Guangmei, wife of former Vice Premier Liu Shaoqi. She smiled faintly. “That's right,” she said. “That was my cell.”

Yuan Geng was finally released on September 30, 1973—five and a half years after his arrest.

Even after his return home, he could not escape the prison's echo. At Qincheng, guards would bang on the walls each time a prisoner turned over in bed. Now, in freedom, he still woke in fright at every sound. It took months before he could sleep through the night. The atrophy in his leg took longer to heal. Day after day, Wang supported him, helping him walk—first a few steps, then longer distances, until after a year he could walk evenly again.

But the deeper scars remained. Some of his fellow prisoners had spent so many years pacing the same narrow cell that when released, they could no longer walk in straight lines. They circled unconsciously, unable even to cross a street.

People, ah—people! Where had human dignity gone?

After more than a year of rest and recovery, Yuan Geng was reassigned in 1975 to the Ministry of Communications as deputy director of the Foreign Affairs Bureau. With work resumed, his mind soon regained its sharpness.

Before returning to the ministry, he often cycled through Beijing's streets and grumbled at passing cars: “Can't they drive slower?” But once back in office, being chauffeured in cars himself, he sometimes caught himself thinking, “Can't those cyclists stay closer to the curb?”

He quickly recognized the danger of this quiet shift in perspective and reminded himself:

“Never let the rear end direct the brain.”

It became his creed for the rest of his life.

11. Hong Kong Lesson One

In 1978, after a lifetime of military and diplomatic service, sixty-year-old Yuan Geng embarked on an entirely new path. He was assigned to the Hong Kong China Merchants Group as deputy chairman, marking his first step into the world of economics.

China Merchants Group had a long and storied history. Founded in 1872 by Li Hongzhang, the Qing dynasty's Minister of the Northern Seas, it was among the earliest Chinese-run shipping enterprises to compete with Western firms. On January 15, 1950, thirteen of its ships defected from Hong Kong and sailed north, returning to the newly founded People's Republic. From that point on, the Hong Kong branch of China Merchants became the Ministry of Communications' representative office in the colony. Every Minister of Communications served concurrently as chairman, meaning that in practice the deputy chairman—now Yuan Geng—was the organization's true leader. Counting from Li Hongzhang, Yuan became the twenty-ninth in that line.

By the late 1970s, decades of ultra-”leftist” thinking had left the company stagnant—its operations confined to a corner of Hong Kong, its ambitions narrowed by ideological caution. Yuan's arrival changed everything. Drawing on new directives from the Party Central Committee, he reorganized the enterprise from top to bottom around a bold principle: “rooted in shipping, based in Hong Kong and Macau, backed by the mainland, and oriented toward overseas markets—integrating industry with commerce and trade with production.”

Recalling his early days in Hong Kong at a coastal economic symposium, Yuan told the story of his “first lesson in capitalism.”

“My first lesson in Hong Kong,” he said, “was buying a building. We paid only HK$61.8 million—a bargain. The deposit alone was HK$20 million. We agreed to finalize the deal on a Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. in a lawyer's office. Both sides arrived, documents and checks in hand. Several cars from the seller's side waited downstairs with their engines still running. As soon as we signed, two men grabbed the check and rushed to the bank. It had to be deposited before 3 p.m.—because the next two days were Saturday and Sunday, when banks were closed. Missing that window would mean losing three days of interest on HK$20 million.

“Our finance man said the scene was astonishing. And of course, it made perfect sense. At the time, floating interest rates were 14 percent—a three-day delay meant tens of thousands of dollars lost. If it had been a mainland accountant, he would've taken the check home for the weekend without a second thought. That's the difference. This was my first Hong Kong lesson.

“I'd never worked in economics before, but right away I saw how far we had to go. Within China Merchants, I found people treating overnight checks as nothing unusual! I soon replaced our financial manager with a graduate from the East China Institute of Finance and Economics. After I explained what I'd seen, he understood immediately. Within a week he reorganized our system—and money began to flow in.

“'Time is money'—it's not an empty phrase. Some people criticize me for using it, but I didn't invent it. Our ancestors said long ago: 'An inch of time is worth an inch of gold.' That's even stronger. Time, after all, is more precious than money.”

Once the China Merchants Group was back on course, Yuan began to think about what should come next.

In early 1979, he and several colleagues brought a new proposal to Beijing: a plan to develop an industrial zone in Shekou, a quiet peninsula across the bay from Hong Kong. They reported their vision directly to Li Xiannian and Gu Mu, who received it with enthusiasm. At first, the leaders suggested allocating the entire Nanshan Peninsula to the project. Yuan, modest yet cautious, asked for only 2.14 square kilometers.

As Li Xiannian picked up his pen to sign the approval, Yuan watched in silence and thought to himself: Comrade Xiannian, that single stroke of yours will benefit generations of the Chinese people.

12. Freshness

In August 1984, Shekou Industrial Zone held its first calligraphy and painting exhibition. Upon entering the hall, visitors were greeted by a large screen hung with a striking piece of grass-style calligraphy—vigorous, fluid brushwork that immediately drew the eye. The inscription's words revealed a bold, restless spirit. It was the work of the multi-talented Yuan Geng. I couldn't help taking out my notebook to copy it down.

Climbing the Communication Tower

After the rain, the skies clear—azure light soaking the horizon. Gazing out across this small universe, one feels close enough to touch the Milky Way. Eagles skim the clouds; gulls cut through the waves. What fear do they have of wind or thunder? To overturn heaven and earth is to test the measure of men's courage and wisdom.

Wutong Mountain commands the peaks like a swimming dragon, rolling northwest toward Tuen Mun. The Pearl River winds south to the sea, scattering spring color across the passing boats. Factory roofs gleam like scales, sails form ranks like serpents with wings. China is awakening—its heroes and talents rising in multitudes.

Year: Jiazi. Season: Qingming. After the rain, I climbed Shekou's Communication Tower and was overcome with new feelings. Inspiration came, and I set them to the tune of “Nian Nu Jiao.” Whether the meter fits, I do not care—I value only the meaning. Bao'an, Yuan Geng.

What caught my attention most were the four characters meaning “having new feelings.” In his letter to Tsinghua University President Liu Da, Yuan had written the same phrase: “Each time I climb the Communication Tower, I have new feelings.” Clearly this was not a casual expression. I understood it.

After more than five years of construction, Shekou had transformed into a modern port city. The zone now housed ninety-eight introduced projects, fifty-two already in operation. Dozens of factories and hundreds of dormitory buildings stood where once there had been only desolate beaches. “Factory roofs like fish scales, sails in formation”—Yuan's poetic lines were no exaggeration.

The seven-story administrative building of the Industrial Zone stood beside Wuwan Dock, where representatives of major foreign oil companies and consortiums also worked. Hydrofoils sped daily between Shekou and Hong Kong. In front of the building, fountains arched like sprays of pearls. Behind it, atop the hill, rose the newly built communications tower—its technology state-of-the-art for the 1970s. Climbing it, one could survey the entire zone spread out below. It was no wonder this was Yuan Geng's favorite place in Shekou.

At Liuwan's central shoreline, the Minghua was moored—a massive passenger ship bearing the inscription Maritime World in Deng Xiaoping's own calligraphy. Built in France in 1962 and later purchased by the Guangzhou Ocean Company, the vessel had spent twenty-one years at sea, visiting dozens of ports around the world. Now retired, Shekou has become its final berth. Though it no longer sailed, it retained its grandeur, drawing thousands of visitors to its guest rooms, restaurants, dance halls, shops, and amusement park. At night, with its decks ablaze with light and fireworks bursting above, it resembled a floating palace.

When Yuan Geng decided to purchase it for three million yuan the previous year, many had objected. But time proved him right: Minghua became one of Shekou's defining landmarks, adding a distinctive brilliance to the city's image.

That night, I walked along the seafront. Sitting on a granite railing, I watched the lights shimmer on both shores, listening to the rhythmic crash of waves. The past and present seemed to overlap before my eyes. My heart, like the tide, would not rest.

To the west lay the Lingding Channel—the mouth of the Pearl River. From across the water, I could almost hear Wen Tianxiang's sorrowful lament, “Sighing over Lingding in Lingding Ocean,” and imagine Lu Xiufu plunging into the sea with the last Song emperor in his arms. The rusted cannon at Chiwan Fort nearby still stood as witness. One hundred and forty-four years ago, it had fired China's first shot in the Opium War—defying the British fleet, though it could not save the decaying Qing state.

Flowers bloomed and fell; tides rose and receded. A century passed before the revolutionary year of 1949, when Yuan Geng—then a regimental commander in the People's Liberation Army artillery—led his men to liberate this very coastline, including Dachan Island at the mouth of Lingding Bay. Yet few could have imagined that thirty years of detours would again bring hardship to these same waters.

In those years, some young people lost faith in their country. On dark, windy nights, they came to these deserted beaches and swam toward the lights across the bay. Many drowned mid-crossing, their bodies washed back to the shore they had tried to escape. When Yuan returned to Shekou five years ago and saw the corpses of these victims, his grief was beyond words.

Now, only five years later—hardly a blink in history—Shekou's nightscape gleamed as brightly as the city across the water. It was said that Yuan had once driven to the opposite shore just to gaze at Shekou's glowing skyline, unable to contain his joy. Watching young couples whispering on seaside benches and children skipping beside their parents, I found myself silently wishing them well: Bless you, fortunate people of Shekou.

These were the visible signs of renewal—but there were invisible ones too. The reforms of economic systems, personnel structures, and wage policies, and the new human relationships and values they created, were even more vital and moving than those brilliant lights reflected on the sea.

Ah, fresh Shekou—how radiant your dawn.

13. Heart's Blood

Fresh, living Shekou was sculpted by thousands of workers—through their sweat, hands, and heart's blood. Among them, none poured in more of himself than Yuan Geng.

During the Industrial Zone's founding years, Zhang Zhensheng, general manager of the Hong Kong China Merchants Group's Ocean Company, served as commander-in-chief. He carried out Yuan's vision with tireless dedication, working late into the night and leaving an enduring impression. After Zhang returned to Hong Kong, Yuan personally assumed leadership of the Industrial Zone. He oversaw both policy and practical matters, approaching every issue from a strategic height with far-sighted precision. Yuan worked more than ten hours a day, pausing only for a brief rest in his rattan chair at noon before continuing deep into the night.

Among the first factories introduced to Shekou was the Huamei Steel Plant, a joint venture between China Merchants Group and a Hong Kong investor known as Mr. Shi. Shi had made his fortune in land and stocks, not in manufacturing. It was through an overseas Chinese friend of Yuan's—whom he had met during his years in Indonesia—that Shi was persuaded to explore steel production. Seeing the potential profits, he decided to invest. The venture quickly took shape, equipped with some of the most advanced machinery in China and nearly HK$100 million in total investment.

In the spring of 1984, the plant's shareholders and the Industrial Zone Management Committee met to resolve several operational disputes. One issue dominated the agenda: during construction, the factory had stored more than 3,000 tons of steel at Wuwan Dock for over seven months. The Port Company demanded HK$600,000 in storage fees; the plant refused to pay.

The meeting grew tense. Mr. Shi became visibly agitated, calling in his finance manager and chief engineer to argue the case. They claimed the factory had no storage yards—there was simply nowhere to move the materials. Yuan proposed that they go see for themselves. At the site, he found the claim true but the cause managerial, not material. With better organization, he said, the space could easily be cleared.

Realizing his own negligence, Mr. Shi agreed to pay half the storage fee. But the matter remained unresolved when lunchtime arrived. Yuan suggested adjourning until the afternoon. During the break, he quietly spoke with his own team, reminding them that attracting investors like Mr. Shi had not been easy. “We must think long-term,” he told them. “Sometimes we must take a step back to move forward.”

When the meeting resumed, Mr. Shi, weary of the back-and-forth, threw up his hands. “Boss Yuan, you decide,” he said. “After all, China Merchants Group is part of this factory too.”

Yuan replied evenly: “In this case, both sides bear responsibility. The factory let steel pile up for months—that's mismanagement. But the Port Company is also wrong. You allowed it to sit there just to collect fees. Is that in the spirit of cooperation? We should all be thinking about Shekou's larger interests.”

After a pause, he concluded: “Let's waive the storage fee this time—but it must not happen again. The factory must clear all materials immediately.”

The young Mr. Shi stood, deeply moved. “Thank you, Mr. Yuan,” he said. “I'm completely convinced. The factory accepts the criticism and will clear everything within the deadline.”

From then on, his enthusiasm only grew, and the partnership flourished.

Yuan's philosophy was simple: create an environment where investors could profit, and more investment would follow. At the 1982 opening of the Nanyang Commercial Bank's Shekou branch, he announced the halving of loading and unloading fees—a decision met with thunderous applause. Some colleagues did not understand at the time, but later events proved his strategic foresight: the policy attracted foreign investors in droves.

At the opening ceremony of Japan's Sanyo (Shekou) Company, Yuan told guests with his trademark humor:

“Gentlemen, we hope you make money. Your profit is our victory.”

It was a disarming statement—one that captured Yuan's pragmatic reformist vision. But his meaning was not that Shekou sought no profit of its own. He once told a group of Western oil executives, half in jest:

“Gentlemen, I intend to take money from your pockets. Whether I can depends on my ability.”

Such candor always drew laughter—and respect. But anyone who mistook Yuan's openness for ideological compromise would be wrong. On fundamental questions, his convictions never wavered.

In May 1983, a scandal erupted at Kaida Toy Factory, a wholly foreign-owned enterprise, shaking the entire Industrial Zone.

The factory had been driving its workers mercilessly—forcing them into excessive overtime that sometimes stretched until four or even six in the morning. Exhausted workers collapsed at their stations, illness spread, and those who refused extra hours were dismissed. Discontent simmered.

When the Industrial Zone convened its first Youth League Congress that spring, one of the delegates was Zheng Yanping, a young female worker from Kaida Factory. As Children's Day approached, the factory pushed workers to meet an enormous order. Though the congress was held in the evenings and did not interfere with work, management forbade Zheng from attending. Despite her excellent record, she was suspended without pay, accused of “refusing overtime.”

Outrage spread across Shekou. This was socialist territory—how could capitalists behave with such impunity?

The Youth League had no authority over factory affairs, so the trade union stepped in. Kaida Factory employed more than 1,200 people, a third of Shekou's total workforce at the time. When the factory's trade union was first established, Deputy Director Xiong Bingquan had said: “If Kaida's union cannot be formed, we might as well give up on the entire Industrial Zone.”

The union's chairwoman, Duanmu Mo, was a bespectacled 23-year-old from Lianyungang, Jiangsu—young but principled. She had already written a critical report the previous year when Kaida's management illegally searched workers' dormitories. This time, she acted swiftly, reporting the new abuses to the Industrial Zone leadership.

When the case reached Yuan Geng, he was incensed. He had never met Zheng Yanping, but he cared deeply for Kaida's women workers.

He still remembered his 1981 visit to their dormitories, where he found them without hot water or desks to write letters home. Many wept from homesickness. Accompanied by colleagues Liu Qinglin and Yu Weiping, Yuan promised to resolve their problems within three days. Before leaving, he stretched out his little finger and said with a grin, “Do you believe me? Shall we pinky promise”

The girls had never met such a kind and approachable leader. “We believe you!” they chorused. That belief was not only in Yuan himself but in the Party and in socialism.

Now, seeing their mistreatment, Yuan was furious. In the report he wrote in bold: “Overtime must be voluntary. Speak with the investors—do not let them act recklessly.”

Following his instructions, Duanmu Mo began a detailed investigation. Because most workers labored late into the night, interviews often took place after midnight, lasting until two in the morning. Some workers, afraid of retaliation, knocked on her door in secret to share their stories. After more than a month of sleepless nights, Duanmu gathered enough evidence to make a solid case.

The Shenzhen Municipal Trade Union sent a letter praising her diligence, courage, and integrity. Under guidance from the Industrial Zone and city-level unions, the case was presented formally to the factory, listing years of violations—from illegal dormitory searches to forced overtime. If not corrected, the leadership warned, the case would go to court.

The company relented. Zheng Yanping was reinstated, paid back wages for her suspension, and a new rule was established: overtime must be voluntary and limited to two hours a day.

It was a decisive victory. Zheng was soon elected vice-chair of the Kaida Factory Union and appointed to the Industrial Zone's Women's Committee. Duanmu Mo, meanwhile, was recommended to the Shenzhen University Cadre Training Program in Enterprise Management.

All of Shekou's foreign-invested and joint-venture enterprises took note. The outcome was clear: Shekou was no capitalist enclave—it was socialist ground, where workers' dignity still held firm.

14. Rose City

“Even something as simple as planting roses to beautify Shekou was a policy matter for Yuan Geng,” former Industrial Zone office director and current deputy director Yu Weiping told me. “He personally approved a special fund of 100,000 yuan and invited the 'Two Lius' down from Beijing.”

(The promotion itself reflected Shekou's meritocratic spirit: that April, the younger Gu Liji became office director while Yu was reassigned as deputy—proof that cadres here could move up or down according to need, not seniority.)

The “Two Lius” were Yuan's old friends Liu Yamin and Liu Danyi.

Liu Danyi, from Haimen in Jiangsu Province, came from a family famous for cultivating flowers and bonsai—nicknamed the “Field Scholars.” He himself had loved gardening since childhood. After joining the New Fourth Army in 1940, there was little time for such hobbies, but during the “ten years of chaos,” when he was sidelined, the passion returned. His flowers became well known in Beijing. Liu Yamin's experience was more recent—only three years—but through diligence and study he too had become an expert. Both served as directors of the Beijing Rose Association, each tending hundreds of rose varieties.

By the time Yuan Geng called upon them, Liu Yamin was sixty-seven and Liu Danyi sixty-four—retired cadres with comfortable pensions, content families, and every reason to enjoy quiet lives in the capital. But Yuan “instigated” them to come south.

“If Yuan hadn't invited us, we wouldn't have come,” said the tall, energetic Liu Yamin with a laugh.

Liu Danyi, in turn, recommended a young colleague to Yuan: Long Quan, thirty-six, director of the Beijing Rose Association and an extraordinary self-taught horticulturalist. Yuan personally wrote to invite him as the Two Lius' assistant.

Long Quan was a Tujia from western Hunan—writer Shen Congwen's nephew and painter Huang Yongyu's cousin. His father taught at the Central University for Nationalities. Until age seven, Long lived in his mountain hometown; when he joined his parents in Beijing, he spoke little Mandarin and entered elementary school late, at nine. Nine years of schooling ended just as the Cultural Revolution began. Assigned as an apprentice at the Beijing Auto Factory, he watched Red Guards storm in, smashing flowerpots and uprooting the courtyard's young jujube trees.

This quiet youth couldn't understand such destruction. Pitying the plants, he secretly took one small tree home at night and replanted it. “Beautiful things should be protected,” he later said. “The mountain flowers of my hometown were so lovely—why shouldn't they grow in Beijing?” From then on, he formed an unbreakable bond with flowers.

As a cadre at the National Printing Factory, he devoted every spare moment to gardening. After ten years, the rescued jujube tree bore fruit, and his courtyard hosted more than four hundred rose varieties. His expertise grew so renowned that graduate students from the Beijing Forestry College invited him to lecture. At the third Beijing Rose Exhibition in May 1983—featuring 3,000 pots and over 400 varieties—Long displayed twenty pots of his own, each a distinct breed.

When West German rose expert Marian toured the exhibition, Long guided him personally. Seeing the young man's simple clothes and modest manner, the visitor tested him, pointing to a famous bloom:

“What variety is this?”

Without hesitation, Long replied, “Your country's Star—ranked third among the world's ten famous varieties, the finest of the 1970s.”

The expert was astonished. Long could identify hundreds of species, recite their origins, and tell their legends like family stories.

On May 6, 1984, he arrived in Guangzhou carrying six hundred seedlings. Industrial Zone cars brought him to Shekou that very day. Two days later, Yuan Geng met him in person and asked how he was adjusting. “I want to be a pioneer,” Long said. “Never a deserter.” His first batch of seedlings had a survival rate above 90 percent. On May 17, Yuan sent him back to Beijing with Liu Danyi; a month later, Long returned again—this time with over four thousand seedlings.

The three flower-growers—two elderly, one young—now shared a simple three-bedroom apartment in the Industrial Zone. The living room contained only rattan chairs and a black-and-white television. They cooked and cleaned for themselves. By Shekou standards, their lives were modest—but they found deep satisfaction in the work.

Each morning, the Two Lius walked twenty minutes to the nursery, working under the hot sun, directing grafting and fertilization. Long left even earlier, returning only at dusk, laboring alongside the workers.

I knew little about horticulture, but listening to them speak was enlightening.

“All good varieties come from grafting and hybridization,” Liu Yamin explained. “Any flower or fruit will degenerate if left pure. Take the peach tree—plant its pit, and you'll get a wild, hairy peach, inedible except as grafting stock. Hybridization requires artificial pollination—it's an art.”

I thought to myself: Isn't Shekou's reform itself a kind of grafting and hybridization? For years we'd closed ourselves off, believing our system to be the purest—as if Marx himself sat only on our kang. But what had that yielded? Everyone knows the result. Hybridization creates new life; it's a universal law—of nature, of society, even of writing. One cannot cling forever to old forms.

The younger Long Quan thought even further. China, he explained, had records of rose cultivation dating back to the Jin Dynasty. Europe originally had only simple wild roses; the repeat-blooming varieties came from China. Empress Josephine, Napoleon's wife, filled her famous rose garden with Chinese imports. But after the Opium War, as the nation declined, so too did its floriculture. Today America, Germany, and France all have national rose associations; China still has none—only a few local ones in cities like Beijing and Shanghai. When foreign enthusiasts seek exchanges, we have few fine varieties to offer. Ancient cultivars that once fascinated the world—like Green Calyx, Iron Handle Red, Rose Peony, and Pink Cluster—have nearly vanished.

“What are the best varieties in the world now?” I asked.

“Yellow Peace,” he replied. “During World War II, a Frenchman sent its cuttings to America.”

“And your plans for Shekou?”

“I want roses to take root here. Generally, roses dislike heat—above 24°C, they bloom poorly. Now it's July, and you can see how small the flowers are. I want to study how to make them thrive here year-round. To make Shekou not just a 'city of roses,' but one where roses truly flourish.”

“Your wife doesn't mind your being away for two years?”

“Of course she minds,” he admitted with a smile. “I married late; my child is only three. When I left, my wife and son saw me off at the airport. As I boarded, the boy called 'Daddy!'—I nearly cried. But I don't regret it. To sacrifice a little personal comfort to beautify Shekou is worth it. The two older comrades are my example.”

He paused, then added: “Some say I came here for high pay or big perks. But I already have everything—appliances, a spacious apartment. Here I earn only 200 yuan a month. The Air Force Logistics Department offered me 250 yuan and a car, but I refused. I've been here more than a month and haven't even seen the Maritime World or the shopping center. I only know the road between the dormitory and the nursery.”

In the humble bamboo shed of the rose nursery, listening to this sunburned, lean Tujia youth speak from the heart, I was deeply moved. Wherever fragrance rises from the soil of Shekou, it is the fragrance of sincerity.

Comrade Yuan Geng—you are remarkable. You brought these three gardeners to Shekou, and through their hands they are planting not only roses but flowers of the spirit. The blossoms you once admired in England—we will surely see them bloom here too.

15. Excited Engineer

On July 10, Yangcheng Evening News ran a Xinhua News Agency feature under the front-page headline “Shekou Concepts.” Beneath the subheading “Being a Cadre Means Creating New Situations,” one passage read:

Shekou has a “Maritime World”—a large, retired ocean liner anchored along the Shenzhen Bay shore and converted into a hotel and entertainment center. It is said to be unique in the world. The former manager of this “Maritime World” had an upright work style and worked diligently, but he was recently dismissed. The reason given: he had made no pioneering contributions.

“I can’t accept that I made no pioneering contributions!” said the former Maritime World general manager, engineer Wang Chaoliang, visibly agitated.

Indeed, most people I spoke with sympathized with Wang. They said he had worked tirelessly to get Maritime World up and running, that it had already turned a profit after only 155 days of operation, and that replacing him seemed unreasonable. Many of the Minghua ship’s staff missed him deeply—if there had been a vote, he would have won by a landslide.

“I have great respect for Director Yuan,” Wang said. “Shekou’s success owes much to him. But in the matter of the Minghua ship, I truly don’t understand his decision. I always followed his instructions. Everyone has shortcomings—why am I being singled out?”

At forty-six, Wang Chaoliang was short, energetic, and outspoken, his emotions plain on his face. I found him easy to understand—and easy to like. After seventeen years designing aircraft and five years working on hovercraft, he had come to Shekou with high hopes, eager to make his mark. To be dismissed just as the Minghua ship enterprise was taking off—it was easy to imagine his pain.

Once calmed, he began recounting the events surrounding Maritime World’s opening.

He was appointed general manager of Maritime World Co., Ltd. on November 19, 1983. Three days later, the Minghua ship was towed to its current position and beached. The site was still unfinished—roads unpaved, the beach not yet filled—and access to the ship required small boats. Work was heavy both onshore and aboard. On December 1, the board set a trial opening date for January 15, 1984, and a formal opening for February 1.

Yuan Geng, then in Beijing for meetings, was deeply concerned about the project’s progress. Each long-distance call from him began with the same question: “How is the Minghua ship coming along?” When he returned to Shekou in early December and found preparations lagging, he grew visibly anxious.

Every morning after 5 a.m., Organization Department cadre Yuan Fuxing went jogging along the shore. One cold, windy morning, around 6 a.m. on December 7, he spotted Yuan Geng standing alone on the beach, collar turned up against the gusts, silently staring at the ship. Knowing Yuan’s temperament well, he understood the meaning of that silence—dissatisfaction—and quietly ran past without disturbing him.

That evening, Yuan returned to the site and encountered General Manager Wang Chaoliang, Deputy General Manager Hu Zongli, and Secretary Yu Qi.

“When are you planning to open?” Yuan asked bluntly.

“February 1,” Wang replied.

“I have no common language with you!” Yuan snapped.

“He’s only been in office for half a month…” Yu Qi ventured cautiously.

“I don’t care! He’s the general manager—that means I’ll find him!” Yuan waved his hand sharply and strode off, the others hurrying behind.

Stopping at the entrance of the Seascape Restaurant, he turned and continued, “Work demands total dedication—heart and soul! I’m an old man, yet I’m the one who’s anxious. Aren’t you anxious?”

“Director Yuan, I am,” Wang answered calmly.

“I know you work hard,” Yuan said, his tone softening. “But February is too late. You don’t need everything perfect to open. Open partially first. Today is December 7. In eight days—December 15—you must begin partial operations.”

“We’ll make it happen!” Wang responded immediately, handing Yuan the draft business plan for Maritime World Co., Ltd., prepared by Hu Zongli.

Yuan accepted the document, now calmer, and turned to Yu Qi: “Little Yu, can you handle all this? Did your father ever scold you like this?”

Yu Qi smiled. “Nothing I can’t handle. But my father wasn’t this fierce.”

That night, Yuan stayed up nearly until dawn reading the business plan. On its final page, he wrote a long comment in his bold, familiar handwriting:

This report’s analysis is basically sound. But management always waits for perfection—everything in place before opening—and so they delay until February. I believe we should not wait for all conditions to be ideal. Open early, improve gradually.

If we insist on perfection before beginning, we will never begin. Prepare for six months of possible losses. What matters is spirit—treat enterprise success and failure as personal success and failure. Dedicate yourselves fully; aim for excellent service, fine management. Even if profits don’t come immediately, that’s acceptable—no one guarantees instant success.

Shekou needs a Maritime World like the Minghua. Nationally, it adds color to our experiment. I trust our management team—give them autonomy and room for innovation. Support them, don’t pour cold water at the first setback.

But when difficulties arise, they must face them with determination and courage. At present, I see a lack of urgency. The site feels quiet, the pace slow, and departments are passing blame. That must change.

The next morning, acting on Yuan’s comments, China Merchants Ocean Company general manager Jiang Bo convened a joint meeting to coordinate all departments. Within days, work crews were operating around the clock.

On December 15, the Minghua ship opened fifty guest rooms for trial use. Yuan Geng, Jiang Bo, and Wang Jingui inspected the site and expressed satisfaction. The following day, the first guests boarded. On December 23, a banquet for foreign guests and Hong Kong investors was held in the ship’s ballroom.

On January 26, 1984, Deng Xiaoping and other central leaders visited Shekou, touring the ship, having lunch on board, and listening to Yuan’s report. Delighted, Comrade Deng inscribed the name Maritime World in his own hand. Overnight, the Minghua ship became famous across China.

Wang Chaoliang later admitted that without Yuan’s insistence on early opening, the ship could never have hosted Deng Xiaoping. “Director Yuan’s sense of urgency was absolutely right,” he said. “His vision was extraordinary.” Still, Wang felt wronged.

“You’re now preparing work for the Second Civil Aviation project,” I reminded him. “That’s far more important than the Minghua. Doesn’t that show Yuan still trusts you?”

The Second Civil Aviation company, initiated by China Merchants Group in partnership with Fujian, Guangdong, and Guangxi, was a major new venture. Wang had been appointed to its preparatory team.

“Of course, if it succeeds, it will be far more significant than the Minghua,” Wang said. “But when I was notified on April 11 to step down, no one mentioned this assignment. They only gave it to me on May 7.”

“Whether they said it or not, you were still chosen. What did Yuan tell you?”

“He said, ‘After your work adjustment, we’ve considered new responsibilities. Now we’d like you to help prepare the Second Civil Aviation project. If you agree, start by taking a trip out.’”

“He said ‘adjustment,’ not ‘dismissal,’” I pointed out. “That means he still trusts you. Be open-minded, and don’t dwell on it.”

Wang sighed. “The project’s now mainly under the Civil Aviation Administration—it may not succeed. Recently, they’ve asked me to lead a recruitment team to the Northwest and Southwest to find students for the fourth enterprise management training program.”

“That shows even more trust,” I said, encouraging him. “Go in good spirits. Don’t think too much about the past.”

Wang Chaoliang left. But soon, criticisms of the new Minghua ship general manager, Zheng Yi, reached my ears. I began to wonder whether Yuan Geng had made a rare mistake. After all, even the best leaders are only human.

Yet the Minghua ship was no ordinary enterprise—it was the symbol of Shekou itself. I decided to visit this twenty-four-year-old general manager aboard the ship.

16. The Young General Manager

One afternoon I climbed to the highest deck of the Minghua and knocked on the general manager’s office door. The office had two rooms: the outer one belonged to Secretary Yu Qi, and the inner to the general and deputy general managers. The door opened, and out stepped Zheng Yi, wearing a checkered shirt and glasses, his fair, youthful face still marked with the traces of a student.

Seeing my press credentials, he said to Yu Qi:

“I have a few things to take care of—please receive him first.”

Then he disappeared into the inner room and closed the door behind him.

“Such arrogance,” I thought. Yu Qi, head bowed, continued writing without acknowledging me. I could only sit on the sofa and wait.

Half an hour passed before she finally looked up and spoke politely. She appeared around thirty, mature and steady—also a Tsinghua University graduate. I explained that I was writing about Yuan Geng and hoped to understand his approach to personnel from their perspective.

Yu Qi responded cautiously. “I personally have good relations with former General Manager Wang Chaoliang,” she said. “He’s an excellent comrade—enthusiastic, upright, and hardworking, with good relations among the staff. But he had too much artistic temperament—he hesitated too much and couldn’t keep pace with Shekou’s development.

“Director Yuan’s decision to replace him with Zheng Yi was the right one. This new general manager may look young, but he’s decisive and has strong managerial instincts. His first major move after taking office was reforming the wage system—abolishing the fixed base salary and implementing fully position-based pay, expanding differences to stimulate initiative among cadres and workers. Some disagreed, but Director Yuan supported it, saying, ‘Why not give it a try?’”

Just then Zheng Yi emerged from the inner room, speaking on the phone. Yu Qi said:

“He’s writing about Director Yuan—you can speak with him later.”

Then she continued, “Director Yuan always looks at things from a higher vantage than we do. Take the Minghua ship, for example—why was he so determined to buy it and open it quickly? He was thinking about the South China Sea oil industry. The factories here are still small, with limited prospects, but if Shekou becomes the logistics base for offshore oil, its future is limitless. To do that, we need to keep oil company personnel here. Our hotels and guesthouses weren’t enough, and before the Nanhai Hotel was ready, the Minghua could fill that role. That’s why Director Yuan pushed for it so urgently—and why he grew anxious when management fell behind.”

At last Zheng Yi invited me into his office. Up close, he seemed open rather than arrogant.

“This is an attractive position,” he said with a smile, “but I’m not a qualified manager. I’m ready to step down anytime—if I do poorly, I’ll step down; if I do well, I might also step down for the sake of reform. Perhaps people can tolerate me now, but I don’t know for how long.”

I began to like him. He was only twenty-four—the same age as my eldest son. Some rough edges were understandable.

“We used to talk about cadres being able to move up or down,” he continued. “But in practice that never really happened. Now we’re trying to make it real. Sometimes the process isn’t handled well, and those who step down inevitably feel hurt—but the direction is right and must continue. Recently I dismissed a housekeeping manager from Hong Kong who earned HK$6,000 a month. He made no mistakes, but I dismissed him for one reason—he couldn’t smile! He kept a straight face all day, gloomy and cold. That might be acceptable elsewhere, but not at the front desk. Guests would think we were unfriendly. He left without protest—said it was only natural: if he couldn’t satisfy the general manager, he should go. That’s the Hong Kong way. If it had been one of our comrades, it would have been endless trouble. Just one bridge away, across Luohu, and the difference in mindset is enormous.”

I not only liked him—I began to admire him.

“I want strict management,” he said, “but also humanity. I want a system neither Japanese nor American, but our own—strict yet humane, ruled by law, not by men. I’m experimenting. Experiments can fail, but failure itself is experience—also wealth. Of course, I have shortcomings. So does Director Yuan—and those might one day prove disastrous for Shekou. But we’re doing everything we can to avoid failure, because the consequences would be too great.”

Now I respected him.

“On some issues,” he added, “Director Yuan and I differ. For example, contracting our Chinese restaurant to Hong Kong’s Huayuan Restaurant was his idea. I disagreed. He called me and said, ‘Don’t fear capitalists making money,’ which is certainly right. But Hong Kong merchants prioritize their own profits—Huayuan eats the meat while we gnaw the bones. How can that succeed?”

He had sharp edges—and I understood why Yuan Geng valued him. Yuan disliked yes-men. He might not agree with Zheng Yi, but he would never resent a dissenting opinion.

“Some say that when the Nanhai Hotel opens, the Minghua ship will lose relevance. I disagree. They can’t replace each other—one excels in features, the other in service. Manage both well, and the prospects are strong. I also want to expand inland—establish outlets in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and other cities. Tourism can’t be confined to one shore.”

I thought to myself: he's a real managerial talent. As we parted, I mentioned visiting his home sometime; he welcomed the idea.

To better understand how cadres viewed him, I later met with Yu Dehai, Party Committee member and deputy secretary of the Discipline Inspection Commission, and Yuan Fuxing, director of the Organization Department—both responsible for cadre appointments.

I trusted them both deeply. Yu Dehai, thirty-nine, had been an engineer and factory director at Shekou’s earliest Zhonghong Oxygen Plant. His management was so effective that Hong Kong investors eventually withdrew their own staff and left operations entirely to him.

“I never expected to end up managing cadres,” he said frankly. “I’ve never even been inside Director Yuan’s home. If I do poorly, I’ll just go back to being an engineer.”

His sincerity impressed me.

Discussing Zheng Yi and Wang Chaoliang, he said both had strengths: Zheng was more decisive, Wang better with the masses.

“In a chaotic environment, replacing Wang with Zheng was correct. The Party Committee approved unanimously. But Wang’s contributions can’t be erased—he should be reused.”

On Zheng Yi’s dismissal of several workers, though, Yu Dehai disapproved.

“I told him, I ran a factory for years without dismissing a single worker—and the results were excellent.”

Yuan Fuxing, thirty-six, looked like a young man in his twenties thanks to his baby face and daily exercise. A Zhejiang University computer science graduate, he had once taught at Lanzhou University. Back in 1980, during the student elections for People’s Representatives, when some students made bold statements and were later targeted, he had defended them:

“They were the best students—studious, thoughtful, patriotic. They read widely and cared deeply for the nation. Some said excessive things, but none opposed the Party or socialism.”

I could see why he had been trusted with cadre work after coming to Shekou.

When Yuan Geng considered replacing Wang Chaoliang, he first consulted Yuan Fuxing.

“Zheng is firm and unsentimental,” Yuan told me. “Wang, by contrast, is too emotional—his crew still speaks well of him, but we must act by principle, not by sentiment. Wang used people unwisely, creating division. Some he promoted undermined him; others with talent he left idle. One capable cadre—a former regional troupe director and film company manager—ended up selling arcade tokens for three months. Wang wanted him as entertainment manager but couldn’t decide.”

That man eventually transferred to Shenzhen Television as personnel chief. He was only forty-two, but Zheng reportedly said he was too old—a real loss.

“But Wang is upright and resourceful,” Yuan continued. “If Second Civil Aviation doesn’t succeed, he should still be reassigned. We’re even considering him for deputy general manager of the Nanhai Hotel.”

“Director Yuan’s decision to promote Zheng Yi showed foresight,” he added. “At first, we worried about Zheng’s youth, but results speak for themselves. Whether he grows depends on his own learning. Don’t fear mistakes—veteran cadres made them too. Yuan uses cadres like a coach. On the field, the coach says, ‘Number 4 down, number 7 up’—not because number 4 is bad, but because he needs to test number 7’s jump or aim.”

It was an apt analogy. I remembered Yuan Geng using similar words in a speech:

“Let cadres move up and down normally. Today you’re the manager; tomorrow you step down to make room for another—that’s normal. But many see it as abnormal. Turning the abnormal into the normal—that’s reform.”

I suddenly pictured him like the women’s volleyball coach Yuan Weimin—their faces overlapping in my mind. In a sense, wasn’t Yuan Geng also a coach? Strict, exacting, but committed to his team.

Yu Dehai and Yuan Fuxing told me a story illustrating that strictness.

Zheng Yi once wanted to appoint a young man from Shanghai as shopping center manager. The Organization Department objected, needing that person for financial work, and recommended another candidate from the enterprise management training program. Zheng disagreed and went to Yuan Geng for support.

“On cadre appointments,” Yuan said firmly, “listen to the Organization Department.”

“Do you trust me or not?” Zheng asked.

“I both trust and don’t trust you,” Yuan replied. “I trust you, which is why I made you general manager. But I don’t know yet if you can truly succeed, so I must keep observing—your reports, your business results, your reputation among the workers.”

Zheng eventually accepted the recommendation, and practice proved the choice sound. He later apologized to Yu Dehai, who waved it off.

“No need—it’s normal work.”

At a coastal cities economic symposium, Yuan Geng referred to this incident (without names) and turned it into a theoretical point:

“Our cadres have no absolute responsibility; therefore they cannot have absolute power. In capitalist enterprises, ownership gives absolute responsibility—and power. If the company fails, the owner bears the loss. But our enterprises belong to the people. When power, responsibility, and benefit aren’t clearly defined, no one should hold unchecked authority. Personnel decisions must go through the organization department—that’s their function. The question of how to grant cadres sufficient power and benefit while maintaining accountability is still unresolved.”

One Saturday evening, I paid an unannounced visit to Zheng Yi’s new apartment. He had just married and recently moved in—the living room was still bare. Two young men I didn’t know were sitting there.

“They’re both managers,” Zheng said with a smile. “We could start a managers’ club.”

The taller man was Chen Gang, twenty-six, manager of the newly formed Yinxing Electronic Engineering Company. The shorter one, Zhu Jiajun, twenty-five, had replaced Zheng as Shanghai Restaurant manager. Both were university graduates in automatic control. Remembering Yuan’s “coach” analogy, I looked at them like promising athletes and silently wished them gold medals in the field of economic construction.

They had business to discuss, so Zheng promised to visit me at 7:30 Monday evening.

At 7:10 Monday, he appeared—hurried.

“Sorry, something came up tonight. Let’s talk another day.”

He rushed off again. From the corridor, I watched him drive away in a beige utility vehicle, speeding into the dark. Even his driving had character. I knew some people criticized “managers driving cars,” but perhaps such managers would soon become the norm.

The next evening, in the rain, Zheng arrived at last.

“Yesterday I had to take dozens of staff to Xiangmi Lake for a barbecue,” he said, laughing. “Tonight’s meeting was postponed by the weather. Workers can’t always fear me—I have to build real relationships, make them love this enterprise, fear losing it. Some criticize me for dismissing workers, but no one criticizes me for this.”

I said, “Workers need a sense of ownership—both respect for you and dignity for themselves.”

He nodded.

Our conversation turned to management.

“There’s too much talk about me,” he said. “I don’t have time to pay attention. After handling daily matters in the morning, I spend the next seven hours thinking about development for the coming years. I’m now negotiating with a Hong Kong consortium to bring in major investment for a large marine amusement park—please keep that confidential for now.”

He mentioned a figure that was staggering.

“If successful, the area around the Minghua ship will become a real ‘Maritime World.’ The Shanghai project has already succeeded—I’ll go there in a few days to sign contracts. Next comes Guangzhou, then other cities. Running just one ship isn’t enough.”

He spoke with infectious energy. Listening, I realized he was one of those people whose strengths and weaknesses are both striking. In Shekou, such people were given trust, space, and challenge—and from that, they built new realities. Elsewhere, their fates might have been far less fortunate.

And I understood, more deeply than ever, the rare value of Yuan Geng.

17. Blood Boiling

During my month in Shekou, I spoke with Yuan Geng for less than an hour and never managed to meet his children. I knew too little about his family life—which was regrettable!

A young man once told me, “Yuan Zhongyin has shared many stories—Yuan Geng’s family life is fascinating.” I asked him to tell me more. He hesitated. “You should speak with Yuan Zhongyin directly. Anything I say would just be second-hand.”

But Yuan Zhongyin was away on business, and I couldn’t stay in Shekou forever.

One afternoon, I knocked on his door. A woman in her sixties answered—a Hakka, I guessed. She must have been Yuan Geng’s sister-in-law. Yuan had brought two younger brothers into the revolution; one was killed by a Japanese air raid during the Anti-Japanese War. This sister-in-law had lived with the Yuan family ever since. She greeted me warmly, but we couldn’t converse—she spoke Hakka, and I didn’t. I could only smile, nod, and leave.

That same young man, though, deserves to be remembered here!

His name was Zhou Weimin, a Tsinghua University graduate. In 1976, he was imprisoned for half a year for participating in the April Fifth Movement. After the fall of the Gang of Four, he became deputy secretary of the Tsinghua Youth League. But for various historical reasons, his name remained controversial.

After arriving in Shekou, Zhou worked as director of the Propaganda Department for six months, then as a line worker at the telecommunications company for another six. Only recently had he been appointed deputy manager of the real estate company. His trajectory itself was remarkable—and spoke volumes about Shekou’s experimental spirit. Yuan Geng’s decision to employ him carried risk. Zhou and his wife, Yu Qi, had once prepared to leave Shekou, but in the end, they chose to stay.

Young people loved hearing Yuan Geng speak. But when his words repeated, some began to grow impatient. “Is Director Yuan getting old?” they would joke. “He’s starting to nag!” Zhou gathered such remarks—and other criticisms of Yuan’s shortcomings—into a letter. He sent it directly to Yuan.

A few days later, Yuan clasped his hand and said earnestly, “Thank you! No one has reported these opinions to me in a long time. Keep reminding me in the future!”

When Comrade Hu Yaobang visited Shekou the previous year, Yuan had personally introduced several young cadres—Gu Liji, Zhao Yong, and Zhou Weimin among them—to the General Secretary. Hu Yaobang asked their ages and backgrounds, then said with emotion, “A few days ago, there was a television program called Scholar Records. It ended with two lines: ‘The waves of the Yangtze push forward the waves before them; heroes are born among the young!’ I suppose you are those young people!”

Indeed, Shekou was full of them!

Over that month, one impression grew stronger each day: in Shekou, passionate, idealistic people were everywhere—not just one Yuan Geng. Among everyone I interviewed—old and young, men and women, celebrated and controversial—there was one uniting force: they loved Shekou, and they longed for reform! Though their views on specific people and events might differ, their hearts were warm, their blood hot. This truly was a world of hot-blooded men—and women!

If cities could be compared to people, then five-year-old Shekou, this vibrant harbor town, was itself a hot-blooded youth with boundless vitality and limitless promise!

Shekou’s harbor connects to the long coastline of the motherland; its roads lead deep into the nation’s vast interior. From coasts to cities, from villages to factories, the tide of reform rolls forward with unstoppable momentum! And within this tide, countless hot-blooded men and women fight with all their strength—hearts already ablaze, striving for truth!

The truth lies in reform! And reform is the truth!

(Originally published in Huacheng, Issue 6, 1984)

Li Bingyin ed.

The Great Report

China's Reform and Opening of 40 Years

A Selection of Reportage Literature

Vol. II/V

Li Bingyin (Hg.):

The Great Report. China's Reform and Opening 40 Years. A Selection of Reportage Literature. Vol. II ; Bochum : Europ. Univ.-vlg. 2025

  ISBN 978-3-86515-607-5

ISBN: 978-3-869966-607-5, EAN: *9783865156075*

This is volume no. II. ISBN of all volumes: I: 978-3-86515-230-5, II: 978-3-86515-607-5, III: 978-3-86515-608-2, IV: 978-3-86515-609-9, V: 978-3-86515-610-5.

Chinese Original: 《大记录——中国改革开放四十年报告文学选》李炳银 主编

Copyright © 2018.10 安徽文艺出版社 Anhui Literature and Art Press

Translation: Martin Woesler 吴漠汀 (Hunan Normal Universität 湖南师范大学), Xiaoyu (Emily) Wang

English Edition Copyright © European University Press, published December 2025

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as expressly permitted by law, without the prior written permission of the Publisher.

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek: The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available online at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Translation and book were realized with Chinese state support. The content of the book does not express the opinion of European University Press or the translators. The book is a contemporary historical document of Chinese propaganda. It is made available for scholarly reception.

This edition was published in 2025 by European University Press

Europäischer Universitätsverlag GmbH Berlin · Bochum · Dülmen · London · Paris 2025

Table of Contents

Volume I

Preface, Li Bingyin 1

Goldbach’s Conjecture, Xu Chi 9

The Captain, Ke Yan 36

Infatuation, Li You 60

Chinese Girls, Lu Guang 119

Anecdotes of Sanmen Li, Qiao Mai 181

Tears of the Populus Euphratica, Meng Xiaoyun 195

The Wilderness Calls, Wang Zhaojun 212

Hot-Blooded Men, Li Shifei 233

Volume II

The Great Trend of Chinese Farmers, Li Yanguo 3

Theory Fanatic, Chen Zufen 57

A Record of Sacred Sorrows, Zhang Min 84

Dreams of a Strong Nation, Zhao Yu 124

Wake Up, Lumberjacks!, Xu Gang 179

Reflections on the Bu Xinsheng Phenomenon, Zhou Jiajun 227

Volume III

The Kunshan Path, Yang Shousong 3

Flying to the Space Port, Li Mingsheng 52

Spring Arrives on the Eastern Wind, Chen Xitian 123

When Good Dreams Come True, Jiang Yonghong 171

Wisdom Storm, Wang Hongjia 3

Volume IV

The Concern Between 40,000 and 4 Million, Zhang Yawen 3

Hong Kong’s Return to the Motherland: A 10-Year Retrospective, Chang Jiang 58

Kapok Blossoms, Li Chunlei 85

The Revolution of Rest, Wang Hongjia and Liu Jian 111

A Career Accompanied by Tears, Jiang Wei 162

Difficult Homecoming, Guo Dong 187

Volume V

Nation, He Jianming 3

The Dragon Explores the Sea, Xu Chen 86

Yuan Longping’s World, Chen Qiwen 135

The “Shenzhou” Highway to Heaven, Lan Ningyuan 211

Wings of Wisdom, Li Qingsong 254

Appendix: Outstanding Reportage Literature from Forty Years of Reform and Opening-Up 272

The Great Trend of Chinese Farmers

An excerpt from the Jiaodong Folk Records

Li Yanguo

Chapter One: Meeting in Beijing

Early spring. Beijing Film Studio.

I was living in a small room at the studio’s guesthouse, endlessly revising a film script.

One day, the duty-room attendant’s voice came over the intercom: “There are visitors for you.”

I went downstairs. Several men in woolen uniforms were waiting in the lobby.

“Brother!”

I recognized him at once—his dark face, furrowed by years of labor, freshly shaved and glowing with energy. He stepped forward politely to shake my hand and introduced his companions. Their bearing and dress astonished me—they were farmers only in the literary sense of the word.

“How did you get here?” I asked.

“We drove ourselves!” He pointed proudly to the jeep outside. It was more than a thousand kilometers by road, and they had come all that way in their own vehicle.

“Where are you headed?”

“To Shenzhen!”

“What for?”

“An investigation!”

In my mind, home was still evening smoke curling from thatched roofs, the long low calls of oxen at dawn, my father’s frayed straw hat, my mother’s faded apron, my brother’s hungry eyes, my sister’s coarse hair ribbon. None of those memories connected with the men standing before me.

“Have you arranged border passes?” I asked.

“All taken care of,” my brother said.

“Are you going by train?”

“No, by plane!”

“How did you manage to get plane tickets?”

“A comrade from the Writers’ Association helped us.”

It had taken them more than twenty years to travel from the fields to the world of letters—a road that once seemed endless. Yet here they were, bursting from the green crops of my memory, charging into the very center of the new world.

The group was led by the young township’s Party secretary, Xie Yutang. With him were already well-known farmer-entrepreneurs like Li Dehai and others. They weren’t going to Shenzhen as tourists; their hometown had invested there, pouring in hundreds of thousands—millions—of yuan. Now they were going to walk the city’s bustling streets as shareholders, looking at the world through that window.

I had no idea how to host these visitors, who seemed like they were from another planet. Then I remembered what I had to offer.

“I’ll take you to the sound stages,” I said. “They’re filming today—it’s quite something to see.”

They instantly transformed into the Chinese Farmers’ Film Investigation Group and followed me to the sets. Art had once been distant and abstract to them; now they were going to see it up close.

At the massive iron doors of the sound stage, we were stopped—visitors needed security clearance. The “Investigation Group” stood there awkwardly. Then another idea struck me.

“Let’s go see Beijing Film Street,” I suggested.

Behind the studio stretched an outdoor backlot built as a permanent set. Clever designers had erected classical storefronts, pavilions, and courtyard walls. Walking there felt like stepping into another century. Behind the Curtain, Sea Prisoner, The Meeting of the Double Heroes, Rickshaw Boy—many stirring historical films had been shot right here, where Chinese farmers often played the roles of the oppressed and the defeated.

With their long strides, my companions quickly covered the length of the street. They slipped behind the façades and burst out laughing.

“It’s all fake!” one of them said.

Nothing seemed to hold their interest. Determined to be a proper host, I said, “Let me treat you to lunch at the studio cafeteria. It’s small, but we’ll eat well. Thirty or forty yuan, no problem!”

They waved me off.

“No, come with us instead.”

“Where to?” I asked.

“Little Cave Heaven—Western food!”

I was speechless. How had they even discovered Little Cave Heaven, that tucked-away Western restaurant hidden somewhere in Beijing’s maze of alleys?

My brothers now seemed like strangers. When had these changes begun? Who had given them this new confidence, this new poise?

They were chasing something—boarding planes, moving at supersonic speed.

One day, history itself will look up to them with respect.

China has more farmers than any other nation. Whoever fails to understand their transformation cannot understand China today. The old image of the peasant I carried in my mind was shaken to its core.

To Jiaodong! To my hometown!

Chapter Two: At My Hometown's Gate

Yantai—my hometown.

It was said to be a city without unemployed youth. An Air Force combat hero now served as deputy mayor; a master’s graduate recruited from Beijing had become the Party Committee’s propaganda chief—both sons of Jiaodong. Teachers on unpaid leave were opening tourism-development companies, with city leaders cutting the ribbons. Alumni of Shanghai Jiaotong University had founded the Yantai Siyuan New Technology Development Company, and economist Yu Guangyuan had sent his congratulations by telegram.

A new television station was set to begin broadcasting on July 1. The collectively funded Yantai University was breaking ground. Construction had begun on a modern marine amusement park on Kuntao Island. Plans were underway for an eastern airport and a western highway. Farmer-run restaurants, hotels, shopping centers, roast-duck shops, and transport companies were thriving.

Truly—yesterday’s dreams were sailing through wind and waves; the mountains of Yantai shone with lights on every slope.

That evening, Party Secretary Wang Jifu came to the guesthouse. He always made time to visit scholars, writers, painters, calligraphers, journalists, editors, and scientists who came to Yantai. He combined a soldier’s decisiveness with a scholar’s grace, speaking with the passion of a poet in a thick local accent that felt like hearing home itself.

He was, in every sense, a legendary figure of modern Jiaodong. One moment he appeared in a suit on the Party Congress podium; the next he was in a hotel negotiating major tourism investments with foreign businesspeople. He might spend a morning accompanying commerce-bureau officials to solve supply problems at individual restaurants, then spend the afternoon reviewing new works with painters from the recently founded academy, and end the day delivering speeches defending farmer-entrepreneurs in the suburban counties.

Having just returned from Dalian—Yantai’s sister city across the bay, where he had gone to study its experience with reform and opening-up—he now sat on the sofa, still energetic.

“What are you writing these days?” he asked, patting the copy of On This Land I had just handed him. “You rarely come home,” he said. “You should really see this homeland of yours. This is the land where martyrs once shed their blood, and now it’s undergoing earth-shaking change. You should see how farmers have become entrepreneurs.”

As he spoke, he gestured broadly, as if he were not indoors but standing on some commanding height, surveying the land.

“‘Muping’s Seven Heroes,’ ‘Penglai’s Eight Immortals,’ ‘Huangxian’s Five Outstanding,’ ‘Qixia’s Three Capable’—they come in groups. These mythical heroes never stand alone; they rise through competition. The Third Plenum has produced countless heroes. You should see how they have followed the Plenum’s banner and changed their destinies.

“Today’s hometown isn’t yesterday’s. Today’s agriculture is no longer the old kind. Today’s farmers are not Lu Xun’s Ah Q, Zhao Shuli’s Li Youcai, or Gao Xiaosheng’s Chen Huansheng. The transformation runs deeper than changes in landscape or production—it reaches into people’s souls, shaking many of the old foundations.”

He spoke with the energy of a commander before battle. Then, as abruptly as he had arrived, he hurried downstairs to his car. The sea wind lifted his black coat like a billowing sail. He turned back and called out:

“People are complex, so the literature about them should be complex too. While you sing of reformers’ triumphs, don’t forget their bitterness and trials. No reform travels a straight, linear path.”

The car drove off, midsummer’s coastal wind rising into a whirlwind. And what a powerful whirlwind it was.

Chapter Three: Entering the Fairyland of Penglai

 On the Pavilion of Penglai— A Modern Retelling of an Ancient Myth

Penglai—hometown of the national hero Qi Jiguang and birthplace of the legend The Eight Immortals Cross the Sea—gathers centuries of spirit within its small yet storied pavilion. Isn’t it true? Otherwise, how could Su Dongpo, who served here as prefect for only five days, have written the verse: “Over the Eastern Sea, clouds empty and empty again; within the clear void, the immortals appear”? Why else would overseas Chinese still climb its terraces to burn incense? Why would blue-eyed foreigners photograph themselves beneath the towering ancient cypresses?

When I climbed this pavilion — built upon the national imagination for more than nine centuries — a group of foreign visitors happened to be touring at the same time. Their guide, Liu Yan, was the daughter of a farmer: poised, intelligent, athletic, and gifted with languages. She led them deftly through the intertwined threads of myth and history.

“Miss Liu,” one visitor asked, “why is this place called Penglai?”

“Legend has it,” she replied, “that when the First Emperor of Qin came here in search of the elixir of immortality, he suddenly saw a red glow rising from the sea. Startled, he asked his alchemist, ‘What is that?’

“The alchemist, frightened and unsure, replied, ‘It’s a fairy island.’

“‘What’s the island’s name?’ the Emperor demanded.

“The alchemist looked around desperately and spotted seaweed floating nearby. Both peng and lai are names of sea grasses, so he blurted out the first thing that came to mind: Penglai!

“Since then, the tale of Penglai Fairy Island has spread throughout the land.”

Another asked, “Miss Liu, you mentioned the Eight Immortals who crossed the sea after drinking at this pavilion. Where did they cross to?”

“There are many legends,” Liu Yan said with a smile. “But the countryside of Penglai today has changed beyond recognition. I think the Eight Immortals must have fallen in love with this new earthly life. They’ve been reborn as farmer-entrepreneurs, specialists, and self-employed workers. If you’re interested, you should see the villages for yourselves.”

Her answer, half-playful and half-profound, earned a round of applause. One foreign guest laughed, “Miss Liu, you could be the immortal He Xiangu herself!”

Eden’s Grapes Ripen: The Birth of a Commodity Economy

Today, one can say that the farmers’ old self-sufficient way of thinking has collapsed like mountains of snow!

The Da Jiangjia Brigade’s 20-hectare grape orchard had once been a battlefield between tradition and reform.

At twenty-eight, Party Secretary Jiang Shitan decided to adjust the brigade’s agricultural structure according to the spirit of the Third Plenum. He converted seven hectares of irrigated lowland in the southwest into vineyards—and was immediately besieged.

Criticism came from above, curses from below. Even his own father confronted him.

“Now that the state has raised grain prices,” the old man demanded, “why on earth would you plant grapes?”

To square off the vineyard, fifty mu (about three hectares) of young wheat had to be plowed under. The old captain, Jiang Shixi, led four production team leaders in protest.

“Prodigal son! That’s fifty thousand kilograms of wheat!” one shouted.

“Our ancestors left us this good land, and you’re ruining it!” cried another.

“You’re not human-raised—you heartless boy!” a third cursed.

Cornered, Jiang Shitan became a traitor to the farmers’ eyes. But he persisted, cracking his whip and shouting, “Plow!”

The plow blades shone in the sun. Green seedlings curled and vanished into the dark soil.

Then came the autumn of 1983. Grapes ripened, heavy clusters hanging from trellises. Just listen to their names—Longan, Zexiang, White Ruzao, Crystal Guirenxiang, Chixiazhu—each one a poem in itself!

Jiang invited all six hundred villagers.

“Today,” he announced, “I invite everyone to eat grapes! More than a hundred varieties—taste them all! And while you eat, let’s calculate: each cluster sells for one yuan. Count how many clusters there are!”

There were too many to count!

The village accountant later tallied the numbers: one mu of grapes brought in as much revenue as five metric tons of wheat. The ten or so hectares of vineyards earned more than the brigade’s entire hundred hectares of grain fields!

Eden’s grapes had ripened. The people of Da Jiangjia had awakened!

Then Jiang made another bold leap—he founded a food-processing plant to produce grape preserves, adding value to the fruit of reform.

The plant rose amid struggle and opposition, yet within forty working days it was operating, producing an output worth 140,000 yuan!

“Whenever you reform something,” Jiang said, “there’s always resistance. Remember how smooth the slogan of the ‘Two Whatevers’ sounded after Chairman Mao’s death?—‘Whatever policies Chairman Mao decided, we shall firmly uphold; whatever instructions he gave, we shall steadfastly follow.’ At first, everyone accepted it. But when we began to talk about Mao’s mistakes, the farmers couldn’t bear it.

“When we introduced the household responsibility system—dividing collective land into family plots—they couldn’t stand closing the communal mess halls they’d grown used to. And when we moved toward commodity production, the resistance grew even stronger—because this reform meant something unheard of: farmers changing their career paths! Farmers becoming workers, secretaries becoming managers!”

He laughed, eyes bright.

“Before,” Jiang said, “we planted shoots in spring and ate rice balls in autumn—that was the old rhythm of life! But now, it’s like that song from Fearless: ‘After a century of sleep, our countrymen are awakening—open your eyes, lift your heads!’ We’re breaking free from thousands of years of small-scale peasant farming!”

The Red Skirts of Caodian: Shifting Rhythms of Labor, Desire, and Beauty

When I entered the Caodian Brigade, I kept seeing girls in red skirts—bright, eye-catching flashes of color! Where did they all come from?

Two years earlier, Party Secretary Wang Mingfu had made six trips to Tianjin to recruit a retired female engineer. He raised her salary by twenty grades—three hundred yuan a month, with all expenses covered—and established a thread-dyeing plant. The result was remarkable: with one person invited, one factory was built, one village was thus transformed! Later, a sweater factory grew out of that dyeing workshop, and Caodian’s entire way of life began to change.

After the household responsibility system was introduced, the village suddenly found itself with two new “surpluses”: surplus labor and surplus time. Before long, those surpluses turned into two new “pressures.” The factories now employed more than five hundred workers—most of them young women from neighboring villages.

At first, these girls walked along Caodian’s twenty-five-meter-wide road—lit by street lamps—with shyness and restraint. But the looms quickly changed the old rhythms of life their mothers had followed. No longer did they live by the rule of sunrise to work and sunset to rest. In this “sleepless village,” their greetings had changed from the old “Going up the mountain?” or “Coming down?” to “Night shift?” “Day shift?” “Heading to work?” “Just off?”

You could hear the pride and joy in their voices. Like city dwellers, they carried aluminum lunch boxes in shoulder bags and gathered at meal breaks to talk about work. Their sweaters, woven with patterns of the Penglai Pavilion, were shipped to the Northeast, to Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Henan. Their tastes were no longer satisfied with wildflowers in their hair or red ribbons. Now, with their own wages, they bought fashionable red skirts.

Let’s visit one of these red-skirted girls!

She was Jiang Lihua, twenty-one, from the nearby Shangkou Jiang Brigade. Plump, with a small upturned nose and hair in two permed buns, she was quite charming.

“Why did you come here to work?” I asked.

“Didn’t want to farm at home,” she said frankly, rubbing her hands together with a smile.

“The family’s few hectares don’t need girls—there’s her brother, her father,” the retired old brigade captain beside me added.

“How long do you plan to work here?”

“Until the factory ‘yellows’—closes down,” she laughed. “If it doesn’t ‘yellow,’ I’ll keep working!”

“What was your income last year?”

“1,010 yuan. After year-end expenses, I didn’t dare take the money home. I put it in the commune credit union and handed the passbook to my father.”

“How do you get spending money then?”

“I ask my father… Oh my, why are you recording this? People will laugh!”

“Are your parents happy about your work?”

The old captain answered for her: “Of course they’re happy—she alone earns more than the whole family used to!”

The girl smiled shyly. “Before, I used to ride my second sister’s bicycle to work. This year my father had someone buy me a ‘Golden Deer’ bike from Beigu. He said, ‘Hua, this one’s yours—ride it well.’ When I work overtime, he tells me, ‘Don’t worry about chores, go get some sleep.’ My older sisters can’t compare with me now! For night shifts, I always bring food—my mother makes sure to add two eggs to it.”

The old captain chuckled. “Look at those night-shift girls—who doesn’t eat eggs now? Back then, daughters never tasted them; fathers and brothers always had the first bite.”

The girl went on: “Tomorrow’s Wangxu Temple Fair—my mother said she’d give me and my sister-in-law twenty yuan each for summer clothes.”

The old captain laughed again. “More clothes! Today’s girls never run out of things to wear. I wonder if they collect dust!”

“Have you traveled anywhere?” I asked.

“Not yet!”

The old captain waved his hand. “No need! Traveling’s useless. Some people from Zhaoyuan drove tractors to Penglai Pavilion—the truck flipped into a ditch and killed two on the spot! Besides, hearing about scenery is better than seeing it. A trip to Mount Tai costs over a hundred yuan round trip—better to drink a bottle of liquor at home!”

The girl didn’t reply—perhaps she had her own thoughts.

Back at the guesthouse, my mind couldn’t settle. This village had once been a cart stop on the road from Penglai to Huangxian, known as Caodian—”Grass Shop”—because it also sold fodder. The elders still remembered a folk song passed down through generations:

Poor Caodian, poor Caodian,

Water is one and a quarter kilometers away,

If you’re wearing fancy shoes when you go,

You’ll be returning with muddy feet.

No daughter marries in poor Caodian.

From the mention of “fancy shoes,” the song was clearly written from the perspective of women’s pain. 

Once, people avoided Caodian; now, it’s the women who desperately want to get in.

Wang Mingfu had introduced new rules: any girl who wanted to work in Caodian had to pass tests for both height and appearance. Those who were too short or “not pretty enough” wouldn’t be hired. “How would it look,” he said, “if the girls standing next to the machines were shorter than the machines themselves?”

Later, he even required the workers to learn foreign languages—foreign guests often came to visit the factories.

Outside my door, an old peddler sat selling sundries. He was in his fifties, his glasses held together by a bit of hemp string. Among the soap, combs, and notebooks lay a small book titled Knowledge of Sex. Its printed price—0.32 yuan—had been crossed out and changed to 0.45 in pen.

At dusk, a girl in a red skirt hurried past my window. She glanced around, slipped a one-yuan note onto the table, grabbed the book, and ran off blushing.

They longed to understand the world—and themselves! Yet they were still shy, still uncertain. The old man didn’t offer change. Instead, he quietly took another copy of Knowledge of Sex from the box beside him and laid it in the same spot, as if the book had never been sold.

Civilization had once again gathered a thin layer of dust. Life’s stories often come in such layered shades.

Village Urbanization: A New Understanding of Money

When Shanghai was liberated, Xue Tian was a young machine gunner with the 27th Army’s 81st Division. He slept on the steps of the Guangdong Guild Hall—a tall soldier at 180 centimeters tall, his legs wrapped in cloth, a crooked machine gun across his chest.

One morning, he woke to see a sign hanging above the building’s entrance: “XX Limited Company.” Curious, he asked his squad leader what it meant. The man couldn’t answer. He asked the platoon leader—he didn’t know either. Only later did they learn that a “limited company” was a business model where capitalists pooled their money to run enterprises.

Now, that same machine gunner was sixty-five years old. He was the general manager of the Weiyang Agricultural-Industrial-Commercial United Company of the Suntao Brigade—the first in the Yantai region to reorganize itself into a “company.”

Xue Tian no longer looked like a soldier. His teeth were missing, his words came out in a mumble, and he bore a resemblance to Taishang Laojun, the old, bearded immortal from Taoist paintings. Even his reforms carried traces of old patriarchal thinking.

Beside the sign for the Agricultural-Industrial-Commercial United Company hung another that read “Village Government.” His outfit mixed several eras of Chinese history: a blue cotton jacket on top, military trousers below, and foam slippers on his feet. Both shirt pockets bulged with pens, oddly formal against his worn clothes. Outside, one could hear the hum of mechanized plows blending with the wooden clappers of a tofu vendor.

“Old Li,” he began, slapping his knee, “let me put it simply—I understand money now! We used to treat it like fire, afraid it would burn our hands. But times have changed. If we’re building the economy, our attitude toward money must change too.”

He counted on his fingers. “We’ve got four management departments: agriculture, industry, commerce, and supply and sales. Agriculture handles machinery, breeding, forestry, poultry, vegetables, and flowers. Industry runs woodworking, gravel yards, precast factories, flour mills, noodle workshops, foundries, tool plants, and breweries. Commerce covers traditional medicine, sewing, plastics, cold drinks, bathhouses, restaurants, bakeries, fruit stalls, dental clinics, and photo studios—everything you can imagine! My goal is to turn Suntao into a small city—a little Shanghai.”

I laughed. “You’ve already made it into a village metropolis.”

He grinned. “You just used the bathhouse—how was it? Not worse than in Jinan, right? It cost me ninety thousand yuan to build, all with ceramic tile flooring. From here to Huangxian—about twelve kilometers—and to Penglai—twenty—there’s not another bathhouse like it. Tickets are only twenty-five fen. Now villagers don’t have to wash in the ditches. The young women like it most—they want to be clean. Before, they’d sneak to the river at night for a quick rinse. Everyone who bathes says it’s wonderful!”

“How much profit do small businesses like the dental clinic, the photography shop, or the fruit stand make?” I asked.

“Not much, but broken gold is still gold!” he said, his eyes gleaming. “My bun shop’s called Half Profit. Catchy name, right? We give out free tea—everyone likes to come. They drink and talk until their stomachs are empty, and then—more buns are sold! And even if they don’t eat, their urine still becomes fertilizer for our fields. Don’t underestimate that little shop—it nets fourteen to fifteen thousand yuan a year!”

The lively old manager leaned forward, occasionally patting my foot for emphasis.

“People are shaped by money just as turtles are shaped by water,” he said. “In the old days, we believed that the poorer you were, the more revolutionary you were. But tell me—how can an eagle fly if it’s tied to a turtle’s neck? Now we have to learn how to manage money. That’s why I started a collective shareholding system. The minimum investment is ten yuan per share, the maximum one thousand. Farmers tend to hide their savings, afraid to spend, but this system gives them a sense of ownership. It makes them feel the company is theirs!

“I led by example and put in ten thousand yuan of my own. Dividends are split sixty-forty. Peng Zhen said it well: ‘Concentrate social funds for long-term use.’ It’s sound policy, and it gives us legal footing if disputes arise. Fat water shouldn’t flow into outsiders’ fields! I even shared this method with your Muping’s Li Dehai.”

I asked, “Do you think that approach is appropriate?”

He ignored my question. “The higher-ups keep financial control too tight. Why can’t we be more flexible? Anyway, in this small village, I make the decisions. Not impressed? I know exactly what every man’s wife is doing at home!”

He laughed, then leaned closer. “I admire Li Dehai—he’s got a head for business. Not long ago, rumors spread that he’d been arrested. And for what? ‘Raping women,’ they said! I never believed it. He’s too busy running big enterprises to think of such things—and even if he did, would a man like him need to stoop that low?”

I could only smile bitterly.

The Mysterious Dengzhou Trading House: Information, Concepts, and Ambition

If someone spent 30,000 yuan a year to rent an entire floor of a city hotel, it would be incredible. And if that person happened to be a farmer who had just left the plow, it would be even more astonishing.

Yet that’s exactly the case here. The Dengzhou Trading House—founded and run by farmers—had set up its headquarters in a hotel. The name “Dengzhou Trading House,” cast in steel at the entrance, had cost 800 yuan and was written by a well-known calligrapher from Qingdao.

Once, Gao Xiaosheng’s rustic character Chen Huansheng caused one comic scene after another in county guesthouses. I wondered if any farmers like him still existed here.

The first person I met in the general manager’s office was a young woman named Wu Hongyan. She was in her twenties, with a round, cheerful face framed by two buns and the open, intelligent eyes of a country girl.

When I entered, she was bent over a large desk, sorting through more than forty newspapers and journals, cutting and pasting sections of commodity information. Many of the titles were unfamiliar to me—Shanghai Translation News, Shanghai Materials Market, Get Rich News, Market Weekly, Economic Forecast, Rural Finance, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily, Hunan Economic News.

“Are you the secretary?” I asked.

“Not that important,” she said with a smile. “I’m just a clerk.”

When she learned I was a writer, she surprised me by discussing social issues in literary terms.

“Do you think farmers today still have what Lu Xun called the Ah Q spirit?” she asked.

I hesitated.

She continued, her tone suddenly serious. “I think they do. Farmers who are tied to the land, bullied but unable to leave, have to find a way to comfort themselves. That’s the Ah Q spirit—pretending defeat is victory, turning humiliation into pride. Without it, they couldn’t survive.”

It wasn’t a seminar on rural literature, but this young woman from a distant village was speaking with the insight of a scholar.

Her brother, Wu Hongkang, soon entered. He was the deputy manager of the trading house, and he joined the discussion with ease.

“Some rural cadres act like little emperors,” he said. “The household responsibility system weakened their power and broke up the old alliances. Why do the people support it so strongly? Because it freed them.

“Why did we come to the city? To escape the limits of the brigade! People thrive when they move—trees die when they move. We didn’t come here just for money; we came to prove that we could build something.”

Wu Hongyan jumped back in.

“When farmers start trading houses in the city, they can’t shake off their old habits. They’re easily satisfied with small successes, easily discouraged by setbacks, and tend to work inefficiently.

“Our general manager tells us that farmers who enter the city must shed their farmer’s mindset. Commerce doesn’t allow sloppiness. This is the information age—if we don’t adapt, there’s no way to survive in production or trade.

“Here in Penglai alone, there are nine trading houses—three of them run by farmers like us. The competition is fierce. Without a sense of urgency, how could we possibly keep up?

“That’s why we’ve standardized everything: wake-up at five-thirty in the morning, morning jog, half an hour of self-study at six, breakfast at seven, work begins at seven-thirty, lunch break at eleven-thirty, and by nine at night we’re on the phones exchanging information with offices across the country.”

No wonder people called it the Mysterious Dengzhou Trading House.

A moment later, the general manager, Hou Richao, appeared. He was in his forties, carrying a black briefcase and wearing a crisp suit. His square forehead, deep-set eyes, and pointed chin gave him a look of stubborn resolve. His bloodshot eyes betrayed exhaustion, but also drive.

Hou truly had walked out of the soil. He had cut his “umbilical cord” to the land, subcontracting his one hectare of farmland to others. In exchange, he only asked for 100 kilograms of wheat and 50 kilograms of peanuts per family member each year at state prices. He and his wife devoted themselves entirely to running the trading house.

By leaving the land, he had left his own past behind. He had once pushed carts, carried poles, built Dazhai-style fields, served as a production team leader, and even been recognized as a “model student of Chairman Mao’s works.” Curious and restless by nature, he learned masonry in six months when older masons refused to share their tools. When the village organized plays, he formed a small ten-person music troupe. During the Cultural Revolution, he even taught himself acupuncture—villagers with headaches or fevers would go to him instead of the commune clinic.

In 1983, he contracted a rubber factory and turned a profit, but daily arguments among Party officials over the accounts eventually drove him away.

Now, the Dengzhou Trading House employed over forty staff—mostly farmers who had felt trapped in their villages. Hou had turned himself into a manager and visionary entrepreneur, overseeing departments for administration, supply and sales, general affairs, finance, information, and industry. They even maintained branch offices and information agents in major cities including Dalian, Shenyang, Tianjin, Beijing, Shanghai, Qingdao, and Harbin.

Their grasp of information amazed me.

“Commodity circulation has to take place in economically developed regions,” Hou explained. “Where the economy grows, culture grows. And where culture grows, consumption grows. Only then can you understand the market.

“In the old days, people said, ‘A scholar need not leave home to know the world.’ That might have worked through reading, but now by the time a book is printed, the information is already three seasons old. Today we have telephones, telegraphs, radio, newspapers, television, and human connections. The history of productivity is the history of expanding exchange.

“Marx said that human relationships are the basis of the economy. Without connections, no wealth can be created. That’s why we pursue what economists call ‘horizontal linkage’—broad contact across regions. Our trading house is a small hub connected to many others nationwide. That’s how a small center grows through cooperation with larger ones.”

He tore a form from a stack of papers and handed it to me.

“Our external agents and information staff send these twice a month,” he said. The sheet listed product types, prices, quantities, market trends, and forecasts. “We’re also introducing coded reports for confidentiality. And we’ve hired legal, economic, and policy advisors.”

Before me stood no longer a “Runtu” or a “Chen Huansheng,” but a new kind of Chinese farmer.

I picked up one of the information clippings. It read: ‘Laiwu Yangli Commune, Shandong—20 metric tons of premium garlic seeking buyers.’ Red pen marks circled the line.

“Are you planning to buy garlic?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “A Hong Kong company has ordered 300 tons from us at state foreign trade prices.”

“Have they contacted Laiwu yet?”

“No,” he said, smiling. “Garlic prices will drop soon. If we contact them now, we’ll lose leverage.”

“How do you know the price will fall?”

He replied calmly, “This year’s garlic scapes are abundant. A good scape harvest means a good garlic harvest. Buy now, and we’re the ones begging. Wait a little, and they’ll be begging us.”

His shrewdness was unmistakable.

“Our trading house is just one form of market circulation—a way to regulate supply and demand. But we’re expanding. We plan to open factories for cardboard boxes, beverages, ceramics, and fur coats—the last in partnership with foreign investors. We’re even preparing to buy patents.

“By 1985, we expect five million yuan in net income and six million in taxes to the state. Penglai still lacks a large hotel—foreigners have to stay in Yantai. So we plan to build a thirteen-story luxury hotel with a golf course of about seven hectares. One day, Penglai, with its famous Pavilion, will become Yantai’s new trade center. Foreign investors will come here. And if they don’t understand our people, how can they invest?”

He turned toward a wall calendar showing a Hawaiian beach. Pointing to it, he grinned.

“Look at that—why can’t Penglai look like this?”

His smile carried the confidence and humor of a former village band leader.

“China’s revolution,” he went on, “was in many ways a peasant revolution, yet farmers never got their due. The Third Plenum changed that—its policies finally freed our minds. In the past, smart people served the foolish because that was how the system worked. As the saying goes, ‘The protruding rafter rots first’—but if it rots early, at least it’s done something. Don’t cling to life; cling to contribution.

“Some say we’re just boasting. Let them talk! Before, bragging cost nothing. Now bragging means paying taxes—try it if you don’t believe me!”

Chapter Four: At History's Junction

Yes, history is made up of countless moments—each a particle in humanity’s vast river of time.

Historians have never ignored these moments, these small but decisive “grains” of history: the turning points of wars, the rise and fall of nations, the instant when quantity becomes quality. Xiang Yu’s hesitation at the Hongmen Banquet before Fan Kuai’s bold intervention; Sima Yi’s brief retreat before Zhuge Liang’s empty city ruse; Hitler’s fatal misjudgment of the Allied landing in Normandy—each was a moment that quietly opened a new chapter of history.

The destiny of nations and peoples unfolds in this way, as do the fates of individuals. Yet history, in the end, is like an old man with a fading memory—he remembers only grand ideas and broad outlines to tell his descendants. Literature, by contrast, must draw up from the river of time countless vivid, feeling-laden details to form its own living body. And since history has not yet flowed too far ahead of us, we can still look back at these moments—each marked with the deep imprint of an age in transformation.

The Moment They Wept Like Motherless Children: Helpless and Lost

“Thirty years of hard work—and now, overnight, it’s like we have returned to the time before Liberation.”

When the great floodgate of Yantai’s household responsibility system was finally forced open, seven members of the Party branch committee in Yeyu Brigade, a mountain valley in Qixia County, sat in their small office and wept before Chairman Mao’s portrait.

They were, on average, fifty-five years old. Six had once been soldiers of the Eighth Route Army; three were second-class disabled veterans—all loyal Communist fighters. This was a revolutionary base area, where Commander Xu Shiyou had once lived in nearby Dongxiayu. They had sewn uniforms for the People’s Liberation Army, cared for the wounded, and helped socialism lift this “Beggar’s Valley”—as it was known in the old society—out of poverty.

Now their brigade had orchards, reservoirs, horse carts, diesel engines, and tractors—everything built by following Chairman Mao’s words and leading the masses. Yet the time had come to revise some of the very regulations he had laid down—when the old man himself was no longer there.

Their weeping was heavy and unrestrained, filled with the sorrow of people who had given everything to a cause now shifting beneath their feet.

The Moment He Turned Against Himself: An Awakening

He was a stubborn old man—unyielding to the core.

He rarely admitted defeat. During the Cultural Revolution, he had publicly struggled against thirty-three times in a row. In Huang County, the rebels called the Chi family of Moshan “Little Taiwan,” and him, Chi Benda, “Chiang the Bald.” At the mass criticism meetings, when the rebels kicked him, he struck back with his fists, scattering them in all directions.

Later, the Chi family of Moshan became a “red revolutionary base.” County veterans and the pillars of socialism all came to eat there—hundreds of people a day. Now, with over a hundred machines of various sizes, three cars, six tractors, and orchards covering about seventy hectares, how could he possibly lose to this so-called “big contract system”?

Whenever he had free time, he would squat secretly in the neighboring teams’ fields—not to learn from them, but to find their mistakes.

The County Party Secretary, Du Shicheng—born the same year as the People’s Republic—tried to reason with him patiently.

“The responsibility system is better,” Du said. “With seven hundred households in the commune, that means seven hundred team leaders. The future lies in specialization and socialization.”

But the old man refused to yield. To show he wasn’t obstinate, he made a small compromise: the “big mess hall” was split into a “medium mess hall”—one brigade divided into two, twelve production teams into twenty-four groups. After all, hadn’t the Central Committee said there should be ‘multiple forms’?

At the end of the year, the commune’s rankings were posted on the meeting-room wall. Chi Benda didn’t dare look up. The Moshan Chi family—once the “leading goose”—had fallen to the very bottom. It was almost unbelievable, yet completely true.

At that moment, the old man bowed his white head and pretended to scratch it, hiding the sting of defeat.

The Moment Sunlight Penetrated His Blind Eyes: Faith

Ye County, known as the “southwestern gate” of Yantai, bordered Changwei—where the household responsibility system had taken root earlier. At first, some county leaders insisted, “Ye County must block the southwestern wind!”

Then a blind, frail old man stepped forward, leaning on a seven-foot bamboo pole. His name was Xu Bin, head of the Xu Family Brigade in Guoxi Township. Blind for years, he had served as Party branch secretary for more than three decades. With that bamboo pole guiding his steps, he led over six hundred households—more than two thousand people—from one era into another. Everything they achieved, they had groped toward in the dark.

Perhaps his story embodied the experience of countless Chinese farmers navigating history under special conditions.

How had Xu Bin made the Xu Family Brigade an “advanced” collective? His bamboo pole was marked with measurement lines. When inspecting plowed fields, he felt the depth of each furrow. When checking seedlings, he measured their spacing. Some commune members, thinking to fool him, hoed only the field edges. So he would push his bamboo pole deep into the green stalks to test the soil himself.

For years, such diligence was praised at meetings as a model of “advanced deeds.” Yet beneath the praise lay something tragic—a moving symbol of human perseverance against blindness, literal and societal.

Xu Bin was the first to implement the production responsibility system in his area, using his bamboo pole to break through fixed ideas long divorced from reality. He also pioneered commodity production—founding a sugar mill, a flour-processing workshop, an icehouse (the first farmer-built icehouse I had ever seen), and a repair shop.

He could not watch movies, yet he built the commune’s first cinema, complete with seats.

He could not read, yet he established a library of several thousand books.
He had no children nearby, yet he founded kindergartens that impressed even visiting United Nations inspectors.

He could not see colors—but he created colorful lives.

When Party Secretary Wang Jifu brought Liu Pengyan, editor-in-chief of Yantai Daily, to visit, Liu was deeply moved. “Ye County has a leader,” Wang said. “He belongs on the front page.”

Xu Bin cherished that newspaper clipping like a family heirloom, pasting it carefully into a notebook. “There’s also a radio recording,” he told me, fumbling for the cassette. Humming softly, he slid the tape into the player and pressed play. From the speaker came a woman’s clear, emotional voice: ‘When You Look Back on the Past...’

He sat still, listening. Behind his dark glasses, the hollowed eye sockets looked like volcanic craters that had once burned with fire. His lips trembled faintly. His few remaining eyelashes glistened with moisture, and tears welled in his reddened eyes. The tide of his soul gathered quietly into a single stream, flowing down his cheeks.

When I rose to leave, he reached out his thin hands, groping in the air. I realized he was searching for me to say goodbye. I took his hands in mine, unwilling to let go.

At that moment, I thought: the pain belongs to us—the sighted—who have left it to a blind warrior to find the path ahead.

He was a man who saw the road with his heart.

The Moment He Sought Help and Steeled His Heart: Determination

Do smiles come so easily?

When the collective mess hall was dissolved, Tan Xuyou felt a quiet emptiness. Once, everything had been handled by the team’s “parental officials.” Now, this thin man with a mop of curly hair had to carve out his own path.

During a trip to Zibo, his wife’s cousin suggested starting a small workshop to produce float-type hydrometers—a new product developed by a research institute. Tan Xuyou took the idea home and began trial production. Twenty days later, he brought five finished samples back to the institute. After testing them, the researchers were astonished.

“You made these yourself? State factories need three months to achieve this level of precision!”

Soon after, a wooden signboard appeared in the remote coastal village: Wuning Electric Factory.

Approving glances, doubtful glances, jealous glances—all turned toward that modest black sign with white letters. Then, one night, the sign disappeared. Whoever took it wasn’t in need of firewood. The board wasn’t worth much, but it was the factory’s face—and even in anger, one shouldn’t strike a man’s face.

Tan Xuyou reported the theft to the “parental officials.” On his way, he noticed the brigade’s warehouse window had been pried open. Out of a lingering sense of collective responsibility, he reported that too.

By afternoon, the warehouse window was nailed shut. Tan Xuyou waited at home—for an answer, for justice, for something—but nothing came.

At last, he understood.

He stamped his foot, forged a heavy iron sign with welded posts, and embedded it firmly into the wall.

The Moment He Burst Through Doors: The Search

Iron must endure hammering.

Someone introduced Zhan Xuezhong, secretary of the Pingliyuan Brigade in Huang County, to equipment from Pingling County that could supposedly distill wine from fermentation dregs. Intrigued by the bargain, the young secretary spent 50,000 yuan on the equipment, and technicians were sent to install it.

One day passed. Then two, three… One month, two months, three months… The commune members waited eagerly, hoping to see the first batch of wine. But no wine ever came.

Zhan Xuezhong telegraphed the factory director—no reply. Then, one morning, someone told him that the two “technicians” had vanished. Zhan rushed to the winery. The rooms were empty; the men were gone. The equipment lay there, useless, a heap of scrap metal.

In that instant, blood rushed to his head. He struck the doors in fury. He had been cheated. The middleman and the Pingling factory had conspired to dump worthless equipment on them. Fifty thousand yuan—earned through the villagers’ sweat and toil, saved penny by penny—was gone.

Zhan gathered the contracts and went straight to the county economic court. He spent fifteen yuan to print his complaint and took the first bus to Pingling County. But the court director had gone home to harvest his “responsibility field” wheat. Zhan waited seven days at the hotel before finally seeing him.

“Whether you win or not,” the director said flatly, “you must first pay 2,500 yuan in procedural fees—five percent of your losses.”

Zhan was nearly penniless. He went directly to the factory instead. There they told him, “The director has been replaced. We can’t help you.”

The pain went far beyond financial loss. That moment became his awakening—an education more valuable than any textbook. It taught this “country bumpkin,” who had only learned what a train was in 1978, how to investigate markets and assess credit before producing anything.

One day, a sign in Beijing’s Wangfujing Department Store caught his eye: “No Electric Razors in Stock.” He began to investigate, traveling through Nanjing, Hangzhou, Wuxi, and Shanghai, and wrote a 30,000-word report on the electric razor market. Returning home, he transformed the tear-stained winery into an electrical workshop.

Less than eight months later, when the first batch of electric razors was assembled and brought for inspection, the bearded bureau directors and section chiefs had no idea what they were looking at.

Soon after, the Pingliyuan Electric Factory sign was proudly raised. With an annual output of 100,000 units, the razors sold briskly in eleven provinces and cities, bringing in profits of 120,000 yuan a year.

Now, the once-deceived farmer entrepreneur sat before me, eyes shining with the light of hard-won wisdom, eating a homemade milk popsicle while talking about “enterprise management” and “life philosophy.”

“Our township enterprises are like guerrillas,” he said. “We strike and move. State factories spend a year or two just on approvals and construction, but we start wherever there’s a room available. By the time their buildings are finished, our products have already been updated. Township enterprises have to stay alert—markets shift by the day, even by the hour. Commodity competition is about technology, about information, but also about time. If you have technology and don’t use it fast, it becomes obsolete. Everything moves forward constantly. Our brigade industries have gone from concentrated to dispersed—many processes are now done in villagers’ homes.”

He smiled, eyes steady. “We in Pingliyuan have ambition. The county once wanted to transfer me, but I refused. Not because I couldn’t handle it, or for the treatment—I just couldn’t leave these good people. In my lifetime, I have to build a road for them, one that poverty and ignorance can never return to. Those who shed their blood and sweat for the revolution must never be left disheartened. Now our brigade provides 2,000 yuan a year to each of twenty-six martyrs’ families. Pingliyuan is no longer looked down upon.”

Chapter Five: Days Belonging to Ourselves

In early summer 1984, in an office near Zhongnanhai’s Ziguang Pavilion, I sat with People’s Literature editors Zhou Ming and Wang Nanning, and the writer Zhang Jie, listening to an elder speak about rural reform. As he talked, he idly turned a small globe on his desk.

“If China’s agricultural reform has created miracles,” he said, “where does the secret lie? I believe it lies in one word—‘family.’ This was something forced into being by circumstance. Now, we must never undermine the foundation of family-based management.

“In agriculture, even in the most developed countries, family farms still dominate. In Canada, they account for more than ninety percent; in the United States, family farms achieve the highest efficiency. Social progress is still shaped by the vitality of the family unit. China’s national fabric, too, is deeply woven from family cells. Combine several families, and they will still not develop as quickly as one strong household.”

He paused, rotating the globe again. “China’s old rural economy—its natural and semi-natural, self-sufficient and semi-self-sufficient systems—will soon disappear. In their place will rise a vast and prosperous Chinese rural market, visible to the entire world.”

“The Pacific economic era is coming,” he went on. “The world’s economic center is shifting from Europe to Asia. A golden coastline will soon emerge along China’s shores.”

The globe kept spinning under his fingertips, the continents blurring into motion. As it turned, I seemed to step off from beneath the Ziguang Pavilion and walk straight into the farmhouses of Jiaodong.

Brothers: On Sex and Culture

A foreign scholar once said that only when a man and a woman unite do they form a complete person—perhaps that explains why some lifelong bachelors develop peculiar temperaments.

When I met forty-year-old Man Yugui, he had just climbed out of a talc pit. Covered head to toe in white powder, the talc specialist sat silently—no smile, no expression, only smoke curling from his cigarette. Life’s chisel had carved him into a prematurely aged “talc man.”

Locals called his family the “Bachelor Hall”: three brothers and their elderly father. Four men, three thatched huts, and not a woman in sight. The brigade cadres spoke of them as if they were fossils from another age.

“Our village lies at the foot of the talc mountain. Mining used to be forbidden. Later, Secretary Wang Jifu called on everyone to work hard and get rich. The three brothers mined for a year and became a ten-thousand-yuan household. Isn’t that right, Yugui?”

Man Yugui lifted his head, looked at no one, and muttered a quiet “hmm” before lowering it again.

“Last year they built four new tile-roofed rooms. The sixth brother got married—youngest first, oldest later. Isn’t that right, Yugui?” The tone was half teasing.

Man Yugui turned his neck but said nothing.

He had once been a handsome youth, full of vigor. But when he entered adolescence, he also entered an age of hunger and cold.

That year, his fifth brother died of tetanus in the hospital. The family couldn’t pay the fees, and the hospital refused to release the body. They borrowed money everywhere—even sold a half-grown pig—to bring the small corpse home.

Days later, the third brother caught the same illness. This time, the hospital refused him entry altogether. He died at home.

From then on, the family’s 900-yuan debt bent their backs and broke their spirit.

A psychologist once said that adolescence—the awakening of instinct—is the moment when personality begins to take shape. Sitting before me was perhaps a man whose personality had been warped by the twin hungers of body and soul.

“Everyone, let’s help him,” I suggested.

Someone said, “A security director in the next village just died in a tractor accident. Left behind a wife and two kids.”

“Arrange it quickly,” I said.

A faint smile crossed Man Yugui’s face—shy, hesitant, full of longing. It was like sunlight breaking through clouds, revealing hidden secrets.

Years of material scarcity had killed the old bachelor’s thoughts of marriage, but now, with prosperity on the horizon, something stirred again—the ashes of desire reignited.

Not long ago, when he attended a county meeting for model farmers, Man Yugui had a fabric suit specially made. He wanted, as he put it, “to look human in front of women.”

Even today, China’s sexual culture still bears the weight of economic constraint. When we speak of the damage the “leftist” line inflicted on the countryside, we rarely speak of sex—this most deeply human matter.

“Want to see the pit? Go early…” Man Yugui faced me but avoided my eyes.

I followed him down into the talc pit. It was damp and dark, in places so narrow we had to crawl. Every day he descended like this, kneeling and digging with a pickaxe, hauling up the ore by pulley.

He was mining not only talc, but his own destiny—his lost years, perhaps even his lost hope.

Back at his home, the seventy-six-year-old father wheezed as he spoke.

“In earlier years, some proposed marriage for Yugui. Once they heard there were too many brothers, they gave up. Later, some asked again, but when they heard no new house was built, they gave up too. Older brother unmarried, younger brother won’t try—so both delayed. Now money’s no problem. I plan to build eight more rooms, get wives for my first and second sons. Then I’ll have no worries.”

Across the yard stood the sixth brother’s new house—an oasis in the desert, a mirage that would not fade.

The new home was a world of abundance. Pink flower paper covered the ceiling; bright floral quilts spread across the beds. There were flowers everywhere—real, paper, plastic—blooming from vases, mirrors, and sewing machines.

Under a glass tabletop lay photos from the couple’s honeymoon in Dalian. One showed them standing before the “Creating the World” stone at the Summer Palace.

The air was warm and sweet, filled with life.

The new bride returned from the mountains—a sturdy, healthy woman with a round face, double eyelids, and a cheerful look. Her belly was already beginning to swell.

By entering this home, she had not only found her own completeness but brought new vitality to a family once frozen in time.

She folded clothes gathered from the courtyard, glancing occasionally toward the unfamiliar guest.

Outside the doorway stood Man Yugui. He didn’t enter that bright, fragrant “world,” didn’t look at his sister-in-law—just stood there silently, smoking.

In the sunlight, his face flushed faintly red.

He stood outside the door of happiness, having long since lost the key.

And so he waited—for someone to return it to him.

Sisters: On Women's Dignity

In Zhaoyuan County, known as the “Golden City, Heaven’s Storehouse,” a small sign hung modestly on a recessed side street: Sisters Beauty Salon.

The sign caught my attention.

“Are these self-employed women from the countryside?” I asked.

My companion gave a wary look and waved his hand. “Don’t mention it.”

“What’s wrong?” I pressed.

He leaned closer. “People say it’s… improper. You know. Prostitution.”

“Impossible!” I said immediately, instinctively defending them. “In broad daylight? With a police station down the street?”

He shrugged. “Everyone says so.”

“Have you seen anything?”

“No.”

“Then let’s go get haircuts this afternoon.”

He hesitated. “No… I’d rather not.”

That afternoon, we went anyway. As we stepped inside the Sisters Beauty Salon, my companion’s expression tightened. He glanced back over his shoulder, checking to see if anyone he knew had noticed.

Inside, the salon was clean and carefully arranged. Proper haircutting equipment filled the room. Magazines like Popular Cinema, Popular Television, and People’s Literature hung neatly on the walls beside comic books. On a long table lay children’s toys—rattles, toy cars, inflatable animals—with umbrellas stacked underneath. The sisters’ attention to detail was touching.

Three young women in white smocks moved gracefully through the soft rhythm of scissors and combs. They looked between sixteen and twenty-five—fair, slender, and quiet.

The eldest wore her hair in a soft wave and carried herself with calm gentleness.

The second had lively curls that matched her bright, clever manner.
The youngest wore a simple, youthful cut and had a determined look in her eyes.

Yet all three kept their heads bowed, their eyes lowered, as if the weight of the world pressed down on them.

When the eldest sister finished with a customer, she glanced at me briefly—that was her greeting. I took a seat and began to talk.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“Chen Family Shabu,” she replied quietly.

“How many people in your family?”

“Seven.”

“How much land did you receive when they divided it?”

“Twelve mu.”

“How do you manage the farming?”

She said, “We go back during the busy seasons.”

“What about meals?”

“At first, we brought food from home. Now we buy it here.”

“Where do you live?”

She looked at me through the mirror, her eyes cold. “In the city.”

Then she lowered her eyelids and said nothing more.

Girl, don’t misunderstand literature. Wherever life goes, literature follows. It wants to walk beside you, to be a small guardian light on your difficult journey, to shine softly while you search in the dark. Girl, will you let me see behind the curtain of your heart?

Her name was Hao Zhaoxia. Her sisters were Hao Caixia and Hao Lixia—names as beautiful as dawn itself, though born into a poor village.

Cadres came and went like shadows, but no factory ever came. The production team required every laborer to pay a yearly fee: men, 200 yuan; women, 100. In wealthier brigades, the collective subsidized the farmers. Here, the Hao family owed over 600 yuan.

After junior high, Zhaoxia had to leave school and learn haircutting from her father, who had spent his life as a village barber.

Now the “Sisters Beauty Salon” sign hangs proudly in Zhaoyuan County. The characters had been written by her father himself. For rural girls to enter the city’s service industry was already an act of courage—defying the state-owned “iron rice bowl,” defying tradition.

But such defiance came at a cost.

They tried to trim life according to beauty’s principles, but life pushed its ugliness toward them. Drunken young men barged in at night, mocking them with crude words. Some slipped secret notes, suggesting meetings in private. Soon, rumors began to spread—ugly, baseless, and merciless.

In China, what ruins people faster than gossip about morality?

It was as if society wanted to wrap their feet again in the invisible bindings their mothers had already torn off.

The small salon stood not far from the county government office. I could only hope that the Women’s Federation and the Youth League would notice them soon.

Before I left, I said gently, “You could lease out your land, focus on your work here, maybe even buy a small plot in the city someday. You can live with dignity.”

They looked at me wide-eyed, their voices overlapping. “Really? Is that possible?”

“Yes,” I said. “Hold your heads high, sisters. You’ve already stepped onto history’s stage as representatives of a new kind of strength. Use the scissors in your hands to cut through the old ropes that still bind you.”

This, too, is a women’s movement—quiet, daily, and unrecorded. Through work and persistence, reclaim your self-respect, your self-reliance, your self-worth, and your self-love.

A woman’s dignity lies in what she creates for herself.

Couples: On Marital Relations

Marital Relations I: Mushrooms, Open the Door!

Jiang Xizeng tucked a “pig”—a bundle of cash—into his waistband and traveled thousands of li to Shanxi’s Yuanping Agricultural College in search of Professor Li. He had read the professor’s article in China Youth about the cancer-inhibiting properties of edible lion’s mane mushrooms and made this special trip to learn more. His father and grandmother had both died of cancer.

He bought fungal spores from Shanxi, but his experiments at home failed. His wife, Shi Chunzhi, who suffered from gastric ulcers, lay groaning on the bed and complained, “We’re already too poor to eat properly, and you went and wasted a whole pig on this nonsense!”

Jiang Xizeng, his face burning with frustration, shouted back, “You women only know how to complain about being poor!”

The words cut deeply. Shi Chunzhi, already weary and bitter, had once married him because he “ate state grain” and worked in a factory—hoping she could escape the fields and live a city life. But in 1961, the factory closed, and Jiang came home with nothing but an “honor certificate.” They survived on the charity of an uncle who sent twenty yuan and a bundle of old clothes each year.

Every argument returned to the same wound. “You tricked me back then!” she would say.

Hearing that, Jiang would fall silent—as if his entire marriage had been built on deceit.

He longed to return to Shanxi for further study, but he couldn’t afford the trip. Later, he heard that Laiyang Agricultural College also had a microbiology department. He secretly rode there on his bicycle, stopping strangers at the gate to ask, “Which teacher teaches microbiology? Who’s in charge of mushroom cultivation?”

All day, Shi Chunzhi wondered where her husband had gone. When he came home that night, grinning and clutching a box of fungal spores, she slammed the door in his face.

“Open the door, damn it!” he shouted.

Silence.

That night, saying farewell to the old life felt bleak.

“Mushrooms, open the door!” he muttered.

And indeed, the mushrooms opened the door for him.

He began testing a twenty-square-meter indoor plot—and the harvest was remarkable.

Jiang Xizeng soon converted half a mu of their responsibility land to mushroom cultivation. In 1983, he harvested over 4,500 kilograms, earning more than 5,000 yuan in net income, plus another 3,000 yuan from selling spores. There was another unexpected benefit: his wife’s stomach ulcers disappeared after she began eating mushrooms, and her temper softened.

Now Jiang Xizeng was known across Jiaodong as the “Mushroom Champion.” He led more than ten specialist households in his village and even traveled to other provinces to give paid technical workshops, teaching over sixty trainees.

“When he’s away, I take care of everything at home!” Shi Chunzhi told me proudly.

“Can you really manage it?” I asked.

“I learned by watching him!” she said with a laugh. “I never opposed him out of spite before—I was just worried about money. We had debts, and the children were still in school. But now, if he spends 3,000 yuan on new equipment, I don’t say a word.”

Jiang Xizeng sat beside a doorway framed by a red couplet that read, ‘Living as heroes, dying as ghosts.’ He had not only opened the door to prosperity but also found spiritual satisfaction in his success—a sense of moral renewal that came with teaching others.

Now he liked to tease his wife. “You women are too short-sighted,” he said. “You only think about money. You make a little and immediately want to buy the children fancy clothes—‘general’s uniforms,’ as you call them! Why not make them ‘marshal uniforms’ while you’re at it? Common people should wear common clothes.”

Shi Chunzhi smiled and looked at him with playful affection, like a girl again. “You’re so capable,” she said, pouring him a cup of strong tea.

In this household, commodity production had reshaped not only their income but their marriage itself. Though some traces of the old idea—”a wife shares her husband’s glory”—remained, harmony and pride now came from their own shared labor.

Marital Relations II: Aerial Silk Road

I met a young couple from Longquan Township in Muping who had taken to the skies—literally. They flew to Tibet to sell clothing, opening new aerial “Silk Roads” full of color and adventure. Their story didn’t just symbolize the change in time and lifestyle; it captured the spirit of a new generation of farmers taking flight.

The young wife, Yu Zhengfang, was twenty-three. She refused to follow her mother’s path—binding her feet, spending her life tied to the stove and chicken coop. When it came to “lifelong affairs,” she was among the first to reject the old code of “matchmaker’s words and parents’ orders.”

Ever since I could remember, rural children’s songs about marriage had evolved with the times.

“Little sister-in-law, grow up fast, grow up to marry the village chief—wearing leather shoes, click-click-click!”

“One pocket steps aside, two pockets take a look, three pockets even call you daddy!”

Recently, the songs had taken on a new economic flair:

“Radio with pictures (television), sewing machine with edge-locking, bicycle that smokes, watch that runs on weekends.”

Crude as they were, these ditties reflected the changing economic forces shaping new ideals of marriage.

Now, girls sought capable men who rose from the world of commodity production. Yu Zhengfang met her husband, Lü Baowei, several years earlier while she was cooking for a group of contract farmers in Weihai. She had pursued him boldly, on her own terms.

When I first visited Lü Baowei’s home, the couple was away on business in Wenzhou. Only his grandfather and their little boy, Yannie—apparently named after Marx—were home. When I returned a second time, I finally met Yu Zhengfang.

She wore a pink terylene blouse and a cream pleated skirt, sitting gracefully in a folding chair beside a bed piled with a long, traditional pillow nearly a meter in length.

Elegant and stylish, she occasionally slipped into rougher speech, revealing her village roots. Her words still carried traces of the old dialect—colorful phrases like “That damn donkey!” or “Ma la ge tui!” When she mentioned her husband, she called them “the old woman and the man.”

She spoke eagerly about flying. “It’s so comfortable!” she said. “At first, the climb made me dizzy, but once you’re level, you feel nothing. The clouds look so soft—you could almost grab them! It’s just like the goddess Chang’e flying to the moon.”

After several trips, she said she’d felt both like “Chang’e ascending to heaven” and “a fairy descending to earth.” Airline tickets cost more than a hundred yuan each—yet they saved fourteen days of travel. That, she said proudly, was something her parents’ generation could never have imagined: valuing time itself.

“I could die with my eyes closed now,” she laughed. “Not only have I flown, I’ve taken ships too!”

She pulled out a large photo album filled with snapshots from their journeys—at the Potala Palace, on West Lake’s Su Causeway, along Shanghai’s Nanjing Road, and atop Tianzhu Peak. All the photos were taken with their own camera. The images told a story: a village girl transforming from broomstick-thin simplicity to shoulder-length perms, from coarse homespun to elegant dresses.

“Only Hong Kong and Taiwan left!” she said with a grin.

In a tea tray, I noticed a pile of old airline tickets—none reimbursed.

“Will you go back to Tibet?” I asked.

She frowned. “No. Last trip, we got cheated.”

She didn’t explain what happened, or where her husband was now. Instead, she turned toward the next room and shouted, “Kailuo!”—the name of their dog, borrowed from the Indian film The Slave.

A large yellow dog bounded in, tail wagging. Yu Zhengfang unwrapped a gold-foiled milk candy—worth two matchboxes’ price—and tossed it into the air. The dog leapt and caught it neatly, chewing with obvious pleasure. She laughed softly and unwrapped another.

Marital Relations III: Where Cooking Smoke Rises, People Live

In the winter of 1983, Xing Chunxiang traveled to Jiangsu to visit her son, who was working temporarily at the Jinhu County Agricultural Machinery Plant. It was her first long-distance trip.

There, she saw an entire workshop of women producing rubber goods. The work wasn’t hard, and the profits were good. The equipment was simple—just a press plate and a small kiln.

When she returned home, she brought back a few samples and said to her husband, Xiao Zhenzhu, “Let’s start a family factory.”

The old man frowned. “Where would we get the capital?”

“Everyone takes loans these days,” she replied. “We’ll earn the money and pay it back.”

He hesitated again. “But how will we sell the goods?”

“Our son’s godfather works in the supply and sales department,” she said confidently. “He can help us. And besides—first time, we’ll be strangers; second time, familiar; third time, regular customers.”

Still, he looked doubtful. “We don’t know the technology.”

“Our son can teach us,” she said, determined.

So they began.

When the first shipment was sent out, money came crackling back through the telegraph office. The little mountain village buzzed with excitement. Young wives, girls, even young men competed to become “factory workers.”

Xing Chunxiang, once just another farmer’s wife, now proudly called herself “manager.” She spoke in a rush of new business jargon:

“Our system’s still small—we can’t hire too many people, and capital doesn’t circulate smoothly yet.

“Our products are all for cars and railways—sold to Beijing Auto Assembly, Tianjin Hongguang Hardware, Jilin Railways, even Yinchuan just placed an order. I handle all the outside work myself. To buy rubber, I have to travel far—Shenyang, Tianjin… The old man’s never left home—he gets scared.”

She laughed. “You know, I’ve been in this family for over twenty years. Back then, I couldn’t even eat steamed buns—only sweet potatoes. Every year we divided thirty or forty jin of wheat, never enough to entertain guests. Anything good always went to him first.”

Her husband, Xiao Zhenzhu—the accused party—was busy cooking lunch and said nothing.

Once the family’s farming expert, he now seemed half a head shorter, quietly stirring a pot in the kitchen. His time as the unquestioned center of the household had ended.

Just Look at This Family: On Internal Family Relations

In the countryside, families once held together by blood ties and traditional morals were beginning to face the waves of a new civilization—quietly undergoing subtle but profound change.

The Yuan family lived in Yuan Family Brigade, Yuan Family Commune, Ye County. Thirteen people shared the household: four sons, three daughters-in-law, one daughter, two grandsons, one granddaughter, and the elderly couple. Normally, such a large family would have been on the verge of splitting apart. In the past, the patriarch could maintain harmony only through moral persuasion and feudal authority, mediating quarrels among children and daughters-in-law.

In early 1983, fifty-four-year-old Yuan Chengfang decided to open a family plastics factory to make use of the family’s labor power. He discussed the idea with his wife.

“Why did the team’s collective factory fail?” he asked. “Because there were no rules—just fighting every day until nothing was left but an empty room.”

His wife dismissed the concern. “It’s all our own family. We don’t need regulations.”

“That won’t do,” said the old man firmly. “Better to speak harshly first than regret it later. If we wait until problems arise, it’ll be too late.”

That evening, he gathered the entire family for a meeting.

“The Central Committee wants us to get rich,” he declared. “We must give the government face. If we’re going to run a factory, it must be well-run! Competition is fierce now—we need a proper system. First, we’ll appoint a factory director.”

Naturally, no one dared to compete with him. The children, amused by the novelty of it all, stifled their laughter as they raised their hands in approval. “Dad Director,” they said.

“Good,” Yuan Chengfang announced. “From now on, I’ll act according to factory regulations. Even a sparrow, though small, has all its organs. Now, I’ll assign your duties.”

His assignments were carefully considered. The eldest son became an accountant; the daughter handled attendance; the unmarried fourth son—having no “private motives”—was responsible for scheduling, quality control, and cash management. Yuan himself oversaw technology and supply and sales, while his wife managed “logistics.”

Eight family members worked in four shifts, six hours each, with production quotas. The daughters-in-law and girls were placed on a wage system: twenty-five yuan a month—”for cosmetics and powder money”—plus year-end dividends. Attendance was strictly enforced: one minute late meant losing half a day’s pay; more than five minutes meant a full day docked.

The rules were written on red paper and posted proudly on the factory wall.

The eldest daughter-in-law came from Daxintai in Zhenzhu Township, a thirty-li round trip. Once, when she returned from visiting her parents, she was ten minutes late—and lost a day’s wages. The next time she went home, she left dumplings boiling in the pot, pedaled back sweating, and made it on time.

When I visited the family factory, they had already been named a “Five-Good Family,” and the daughter, Yuan Suzhen, had been honored as a “Good Sister-in-Law.”

I asked her, “You get along so well with your sisters-in-law—can’t you cover for them when they’re late? Why fine them?”

She threw up her hands. “That’s impossible! One sister-in-law delays a bit, then another delays a bit—wouldn’t I work myself to death?”

Their conflicts weren’t petty or contrived. Commodity production had drawn them into the wider world of society. Under the old collective system, family members were tied mainly through consumption—the shared meals, shared burdens, and moral expectations that formed the glue of traditional households. Now, the family itself had become a production unit.

They no longer thought only as laborers but as operators—considering technology, information, and markets. They needed efficiency and competitiveness. Time, too, had changed its meaning. No longer divided simply by spring and autumn, or by “mealtime” and “pipe-smoking” hours, it was measured in shifts, quotas, and delivery schedules.

Family members were now connected not only through kinship and consumption but through labor exchange, product exchange—even competition. Their patterns of distribution changed as production itself transformed.

Like an old wooden boat leaving a quiet harbor, they set sail toward distant waters. In this new sea, family members could no longer cling to rigid moral codes alone—they had to become a coordinated crew, a single functioning whole. And when great ships approached, stirring up waves that threatened to swallow them, they could quickly adjust their course and sail toward new horizons.

Chapter Six: The Communists of Ninghai 

Have you ever seen Rodin’s The Thinker? 

He sits naked, muscles tense and straining, head bowed under the weight of thought. In that still, sculpted intensity, you can feel him wrestling with fate—his own and humanity’s. Through his reflection, you sense the inner power of life itself.

Now, sitting across from me, is Xie Yutang—the young town committee secretary of Ninghai. He’s of medium height, slightly plump, with thick black hair cut in a “drawn sword” style. His eyes combine honesty with intelligence; his manner is calm, composed, and deliberate. Even in silence, he radiates quiet strength. During pauses in our conversation, he often lapses into deep thought—that stillness charged with a kind of fierce turbulence.

The era has given this farmer’s son both talent and mission. He loves life and the land. Seizing the favorable winds of the Third Plenum, he has “never dismounted,” leading the people of Ninghai through four great leaps in four years.

In 1978, Ninghai had barely twenty industrial and sideline projects. Now it boasts more than eight hundred. By 1984, the town’s total income was projected to reach one hundred million yuan. The people of Ninghai had quadrupled their income sixteen years ahead of schedule—one of the best records in northern China.

I managed to pull the whirlwind-busy secretary aside and bring him to a quiet place—Fengyun Forest Garden.

The Garden itself was one of his creations. Ten forested areas surrounded ten small buildings, each with a distinct architectural style—Gothic, classical, Eastern—bringing a touch of modernity to this ancient mountain region. The buildings served as branch offices, later to host scientists, professors, painters, and writers. (I was the first writer to be accepted.) The city’s Party Secretary, Wang Jifu—an accomplished calligrapher—had written the name Fengyun Tower in bold, flowing strokes, meaning “winds rising, clouds surging.”

“Mountains not high, yet elegant; waters not deep, yet clear; land not vast, yet level; forests not large, yet lush…” Xie Yutang sat on the sofa inside Fengyun Tower, borrowing the language of Romance of the Three Kingdoms to describe his creation—Zhuge Liang’s quiet retreat in a modern age. This young cadre bore little resemblance to the old-style township heads of the past.

“Ninghai’s transformation,” he began, “comes from three structural changes after the Third Plenum.”

He spoke like a theorist and a strategist, explaining the town’s success with confident precision.

“First,” he said, “was the change in agriculture’s internal economic structure.

“China’s rural single-economy system had reached its end. When I took office, I conducted a survey of all sixty-five brigades. Each commune member averaged just over one mu of land—urban brigades only half a mu. How could anyone ‘quadruple’ income on that? A man and his wife working together could barely earn forty-eight cents a day. The most dynamic factor in production—the people themselves—were long trapped in rigid, traditional patterns.

“‘Three-level ownership with teams as the foundation’ did play a positive role in correcting the ‘Communist wind’ of the early 1960s. But the team-based system became an obstacle to developing a commodity economy. The production teams controlled everything—land, assets, labor, and distribution. Even sideline work that could earn three or four yuan a day had to be turned in for equal redistribution. How could production develop if people weren’t allowed control over their own labor?

“Chairman Mao once said in the Sixty Articles that the ‘team as foundation’ should last thirty years. But under the ‘Two Whatevers,’ that would have carried us into the 1990s. Would that have worked?”

He paused, his voice lowering.

“With the implementation of the household responsibility system, the rise of commodity production, and the reorganization of the labor force, the end of the production team was historically inevitable.

“After the autumn planting in 1982, I gathered all 150 production team leaders and announced: ‘Your historical mission is complete! From today on, the production team level will disappear forever from China’s countryside. You have served the people well—your contributions will not be forgotten.’

“Breaking up the production team shattered an age-old idea—that the countryside existed only for agricultural production. Once productive forces were liberated, they transformed from physical to intellectual labor, from pure agriculture to agriculture combined with industry. This, in turn, transformed the internal structure of rural economies.”

He leaned forward, eyes gleaming.

“With that change came another: the structure of rural knowledge. Farmers had long been bound by a single, hereditary system of agricultural knowledge, passed down since Shennong’s time. Mechanization brought new tools, but not new thinking. Every year, their dreams of high yields and wealth from the four staple crops burst like soap bubbles. Now, with hopes shifting from farming to industry and trade, they hungered for knowledge but lacked access to it.

“So we mobilized over six hundred technical workers across the town, using new skills and education to cure the farmers’ historical anemia. We opened forty-two specialized training programs—business management, accounting, repair, drafting, machinery, casting, electrical work, plastics, aluminum processing—over a hundred sessions altogether. Thousands of farmers have now stood up from the hardened soil.”

He smiled. “But the most important change,” he said, “was in the cadre structure.

“Reform begins with the locomotive. You can’t pull a new train with a steam engine—you need an internal combustion engine. When I arrived, over sixty percent of our brigade-level cadres were veterans from the land reform and cooperativization years. They were good people, but their experience was limited to traditional agriculture.

“In recent years, we’ve reorganized over forty leadership teams. We’ve reformed the personnel system—breaking iron rice bowls, overturning iron chairs, replacing cadres who couldn’t adapt to the new economy, who only knew how to bend over fields and swing hoes with all their might.

“These times create new generations. The generals have advanced; the marshals have opened new headquarters. Our whole town has produced a group of ‘world-shaking demon kings’ who’ve turned Ninghai upside down!”

I sat stunned. This “theory of structures” was coming from a young township secretary—from the grassroots of rural China. But literature needed stories, not just analysis.

As if reading my thoughts, Xie Yutang smiled, raised his hand, and pointed toward a man carrying a bucket of water in the distance.

“That one,” he said, “counts as an example…”

Breaking the Mold — The Way of Using Talent I

The man now managing a forest farm of tens of thousands of mu had entered the mountains in a rather unusual way.

Originally a commune member of Qiaozi Brigade, Qu Songqing first came to Xie Yutang’s attention through a report from a section chief. The report accused him of quarreling with the brigade leader over housing issues. When the section chief criticized him, Qu had argued back without flinching.

Curious, Xie Yutang sent someone to bring him in.

Qu Songqing—a farmer older than the young town secretary—sat across from him, guarded, already assuming “officials protect their own.”

“Comrade Qu Songqing,” Xie asked, “do you know why I’ve called you here?”

“I know,” Qu said bluntly.

“Your little horns have grown quite sharp,” Xie remarked.

Qu’s voice rose. “The meat I cut is rotting at home, but the brigade leader still won’t let me build a house! He even tore up my foundation!”

“Stop your construction for now,” Xie said calmly.

“Why should I stop?”

“Because there are conflicts within the brigade.”

“The Party committee approved my house from the start,” Qu protested. “Now the secretary and the brigade leader are fighting, and I’m the one getting dragged into it. That’s not fair. My materials are ready, the rainy season’s coming—and building a house only beautifies my hometown and the motherland!”

He spoke neither timidly nor arrogantly, his bloodshot eyes full of stubborn resolve.

“Go back for now,” Xie said evenly. “We’ll send someone to investigate.”

“Fine,” Qu replied, standing up. “But when will you resolve it?”

“Within three days.”

Before leaving, Qu turned back and said firmly, “Secretary Xie, before leaders make judgments, they should investigate. If your criticism of me is right, I’ll correct myself. If it’s not, I reserve my opinion.”

That was a nail neither soft nor hard—just firmly set.

A month later, Xie summoned him again.

“You called for me?” Qu asked cautiously.

“Yes,” said Xie. “The town Party committee has decided—you’ll serve as director of the Nanshan Forest Farm.”

“Me?” Qu’s eyes widened in disbelief. “I… can I even do that?”

Xie didn’t answer directly. He already knew this man’s history—former production team leader, a logger once in the Greater Khingan Mountains, a man who had fought the land and the cold. Looking him squarely in the eye, Xie said, in the tone of a leader addressing another:

“The forest farm covers tens of thousands of mu. It was built by the sweat and blood of our entire town. You must understand that responsibility. From now on, you’ll organize its leadership team.”

When I met Qu Songqing at the end of that year, he had already made the forest farm his stronghold—and expanded far beyond it.

He had founded the Ninghai Embroidery Factory, Ninghai Second Department Store, Fengyun Gold Mine, Fengyun Mutton Restaurant, Trading Company, Flower Company, Construction Company, an icehouse, a brick kiln, a chicken farm, even a passenger transport service.

This once ordinary farmer, now nearly fifty, had become chairman of a sprawling local “trust.”

No one knew where he’d gotten his black Shanghai sedan, but every visitor to the mountains was chauffeured in it.

As we rode through the winding forest roads, the car’s steady hum seemed to carry the power of modern industry into the ancient stillness of the mountains—a symbol of how deeply the new China had begun to move.

Even a Good Horse Eats the Grass Behind — The Way of Using Talent II

When Xie Yutang first took office, Dujiayu was known across the county as “Happy Village.”

Its happiness, however, had nothing to do with prosperity. It meant loose discipline and lazy days, people idling freely while leadership looked the other way. The entire village, home to several hundred residents, had no industry whatsoever. When Xie led a work team there in the spring of 1981, they had to bring five thousand jin of relief grain just to keep the villagers fed.

The Party secretary, old Hu Fengzhou, and the eloquent brigade leader, Kong Qingfu, could never “piss in the same pot,” as the locals put it. The stationed cadres, out of habit and sympathy for the elder, mostly sided with Hu, calling Kong “worthless.” To maintain unity in the leadership team, Xie dismissed Kong from his post as brigade leader.

After being removed, Kong set out on his own. He found work as a supply and sales agent at the Zhiyu Brigade Fruit Wine Factory, run by Secretary Zhang Peiqing—a fellow Jiaodong Peninsula hero who had built a thriving enterprise using Kunyu Mountain’s natural spring water to make date and peach wines. There, Kong’s supposed weakness—his glib tongue—turned into a gift. He was quick with numbers, knew how to talk to people, and could recognize opportunity in a glance. Wherever he went, things began to move.

In February 1982, Xie Yutang sent for him.

“You’re looking for me?” Kong asked, uneasy. He knew he’d spoken critically of the town secretary after being dismissed.

“I removed you as brigade leader,” said Xie. “Do you know why?”

“I do,” Kong replied evenly. “Because I bullied Hu Fengzhou.”

“What have you thought about since stepping down?”

Kong sighed. “Depressed, mostly. I’m still young and strong—I want to accomplish something. After the Party committee removed me, I thought I’d never get another chance.”

Xie studied him. “What do you think of your village now?”

Kong lifted his head. “I could do better than they have.”

“Your ‘Happy Village’ is still miserably poor,” Xie said. “If you were in charge again, what would you do?”

That was all the prompting Kong needed. He launched into a confident, well-organized plan for developing a commodity economy: construction projects, a small foundry, a fruit wine factory—all part of an ambitious program to bring industry to the countryside. His ideas were systematic and realistic.

“The Party committee will study your proposal,” said Xie after listening. “Prepare to return as an industrial brigade leader. You’ll have factory buildings and start-up capital. Begin with the fruit wine factory—your village is still a blank page in commodity production.”

A month later, the Dujiayu Fruit Wine Factory brewed its first batch. When the lid was lifted, the air filled with the rich fragrance of fermenting fruit.

Town Party Committee members came to taste the wine.

Before the liquor even touched his lips, Xie Yutang was already savoring the sweetness of success.

The Young Ginger Is the Spiciest — The Way of Using Talent III

Before the Spring Festival of 1982, Xie Yutang rode in the Kongjiayu Brigade jeep to attend meetings in Haiyang. 

On the way, the driver said, “Secretary Xie, let me recommend someone.”

“Who?”

“Director Wang Rongtuan of the Wangjiyu Standard Parts Factory. If you put him in charge, Wangjiyu might actually have a future!”

“You know him that well?”

“He’s my brother-in-law,” the driver admitted cheerfully—displaying an old-fashioned sense of family loyalty that ignored the rule of “no nepotism.”

For the talent-hungry Xie Yutang, the tip was invaluable. Wangjiyu’s development had stalled, and it badly needed a capable successor. Returning from Haiyang, Xie went straight to the Standard Parts Factory. There he found the young director standing by a row of punch presses, bolts rolling off the line, his broad shoulders tense with purpose—as if waiting for history to hand him his next assignment.

This was indeed a rare talent.

Wang had started out managing the brigade’s pumping station alone, guarding a single diesel engine. Dissatisfied with such idle work, he proposed putting the engine to use by building a mill—one machine serving two purposes. After the mill opened, he noticed a shortage of bolts on the market. He bought 45# steel, drilled holes with simple bits, shaped the pieces with hand files, made a mold, and—using only an iron hammer—produced the first batch within a week. Local silk factories snapped them up immediately. At a time when team labor earned only eight mao a day, his hammer and mold could bring in four yuan.

Now the Standard Parts Factory had grown into a sizable operation with modern equipment and more than two hundred workers. Its products reached eight provinces, accounting for over eighty percent of the brigade’s total income. Yet Wang Rongtuan still wasn’t a Party member. All five members of the local Party branch still clung to their agricultural roots.

What kind of Party members did the new era need? What fresh blood should flow into grassroots ranks? Could branches that failed to lead economic development still be called “good branches”?

The young town secretary pondered these questions deeply. But every reform meets resistance. Xie faced the weight of history itself.

Eight years earlier, Wang Rongtuan had submitted his first Party application. Since then, he had submitted eight applications and filled out six separate forms, yet the branch continued to “test” him—he was, they said, too young.

Old Secretary Wang Yingyun, nearly sixty, was a respected veteran of the urban district. A man of discipline and integrity, he had long enjoyed the villagers’ respect. But he disapproved of this “grandson generation’s” Wang Rongtuan, seeing his ways as the white expert’s path—too worldly, too pragmatic. When visitors came to do business and Wang hosted them for meals, the old secretary scolded, “Improper! We mustn’t engage in unhealthy practices.” When Wang wanted to bring some peanuts on a trip north to purchase machinery, the old secretary waved his hand. “Not approved!”

The two clashed often—sparks flying every time they met.

To the old secretary, Wang Rongtuan was a hedgehog: too prickly to hold, too valuable to throw away. But he was also Wangjiyu’s God of Wealth. In 1981 the branch assigned him a quota of 120,000 yuan—he achieved 200,000. In 1982 the target rose to 240,000—he reached 350,000. In 1983 it was 400,000—he aimed for 550,000.

Wang was like a kite soaring toward the clouds, while the old secretary’s thin string could snap at any moment.

To keep him in check, the old secretary appointed a Party representative to the factory—an elderly retiree named Wang Dianle—to supervise. But two years later, the “supervisor” had become an ally. When Xie investigated, the old Party member told him candidly, “Secretary Xie, if Wangjiyu is to thrive, Wang Rongtuan must be its Party secretary.”

The old secretary erupted. “Whoever tries to change Wang Rongtuan’s organizational status—I’ll appeal directly to the Central Committee!”

Xie Yutang spoke with Wang Yingyun again and again, trying to reason with him. Nothing worked.

Then Wang Rongtuan resigned.

When the villages submitted their 1983 production plans, the old secretary, trembling, reported a goal of 780,000 yuan—far short of the 1.2 million required by the town. Without Wang, even 780,000 seemed impossible. Anxiety gave the old man mouth sores. Finally, he steeled himself, went to Wang’s home, and said, “About your Party membership—the branch has been discussing it…”

Wang stretched his legs and replied calmly, “I’m not refusing to work for the Party. I just don’t have the ability to go on as an ordinary worker. Such a big watermelon as the Standard Parts Factory—shouldn’t the branch come and pick it up?”

The old secretary was speechless. He never expected to fall into the younger man’s trap. Of course, the whole “script”—including Wang’s lines—had been directed by Secretary Xie himself.

It was, in truth, a masterpiece of political artistry—grandson outmaneuvering grandfather, the new generation quietly replacing the old.

But the struggle in Wangjiyu was far from over. It would continue into the next chapter of Ninghai’s transformation.

Seniority and Rank — The Way of Using Talent IV

When I was a child, distant Dongyoufang seemed like a “heavenly kingdom.” It was always first—first in the county to form an agricultural cooperative, first to harvest a thousand jin of wheat per mu, first to reach a daily work value of one yuan. Its garlic yields once hit twelve thousand jin per mu. It was a land of wealth, an earthly paradise. Dongyoufang brides were the pride of the region—chosen from among hundreds.

The village’s name came from an ancient oil mill. The rhythmic pounding of the old oil hammers had long faded into history, but its simple, conservative customs survived through the generations. Villagers rarely visited markets, avoided extravagance, and spent carefully—locking away their savings layer upon layer. No one could match them in traditional agriculture. Since the founding of the People’s Republic, they had always led the county. In surrounding villages, walls bore slogans like: “Study the line, grasp the key points, surpass Dongyoufang!”

Dongyoufang’s pride was deep-rooted. If you want to catch up with us in farming, they’d say, you’ll need time.

But others caught up by car. When Kongjiayu Brigade Secretary Qu Peixuan began driving a jeep on official business, old Dongyoufang Secretary Qu Tingpu was irritated. “So young, and already showing off,” he grumbled to Xie Yutang. “Isn’t that money burning holes in his pockets?”

“It’s not about showing off,” Xie replied patiently. “It’s about adapting to new times.”

Qu Tingpu remained uneasy. “Past cadres didn’t even have bicycles,” he complained to his villagers. “Now these youngsters drive jeeps—what are they thinking?”

A commune member shot back with dry humor: “When our secretary drives a car, we earn car-riding money. When he drives an ox cart, we earn ox-cart money. I only wish he’d fly a plane—then we’d earn plane-riding money too!”

The old secretary was shaken. But what truly unsettled him came soon after. The town Party committee organized a tour for all branch secretaries and brigade leaders—to Xiguan, Xinmou, Wangjiyu, and Kongjiayu—but not to Dongyoufang.

At the time, Qu Tingpu was in the hospital. When he heard the news, his heart sank. A man of five feet, a Party member for over thirty years, had been bypassed. Another of Xie Yutang’s deliberate provocations, perhaps—but it worked. Had he been there, people said later, he’d have dashed himself against a wall.

When Xie came to visit, he spoke gently. “Rest well, Secretary Qu. We’ll have you working another twenty years.” It was a kind of medicine—words meant to soothe an aching heart.

Qu Tingpu had already served sixteen years as secretary. He longed to reach a neat round number—twenty. (His predecessor, Qu Weimo, had served exactly twenty years.) But once he left the hospital, Xie immediately raised the question of succession, as if the earlier promise had been forgotten.

“I’ve trained four people over the years,” Qu protested, shaking his head. “Not one is fit to take over.”

“What about Kong Xianglie?” Xie asked. “Could he do it?”

“No,” Qu said firmly. “His nickname is ‘Slippery Stone Monkey.’ You can’t trust him.”

Xie smiled. “People without nicknames rarely succeed. Wasn’t Sun Wukong called a stone monkey too? He had seventy-two transformations and turned the heavens upside down. If Kong is skilled in agriculture, why not let him develop industry as well?”

Kong Xianglie was indeed a local expert. Though not young, he was sharp and well read—he’d once grown 1,740 jin of corn per mu. When Laiyang County’s Yangjiazhuang invited him for guidance, he could identify wheat varieties at a glance and estimate planting dates from the tillers alone, leaving the hosts astonished. Later, despite knowing nothing about industry, he studied the “Seven Management Systems” and “Eight Indicators” for a week and scored 98 on the exam. He was, by all accounts, a capable man.

“No,” Qu insisted. “I still don’t trust giving him power.”

The debate dragged on until December 20, 1983, when 1,700 Party members gathered at Jixia River Brigade—an old Eighth Route Army base—for annual rectification and branch elections.

Xie Yutang assembled four veteran secretaries: Qu Tingpu, Wang Yingyun, Sun Chengshan of Jixia River, and Wang Shuncheng of Wanghe Village. They were Ninghai’s “Four Elders,” each having carried the Party’s banner through every era—land reform, cooperativization, “Learn from Dazhai,” and the Cultural Revolution. Now they sat together around a stove while the young town secretary spoke to them like a storyteller of history.

“Liu Bang built the Han dynasty because he used talent well,” Xie said. “Han Xin, once forced to crawl between men’s legs, became his great general. Zhou Bo was a drummer; Fan Kuai, a butcher—just like one of our food company workers. Chen Ping came from poverty, Xiao He was only a clerk, and Liu Bang himself was nothing more than a ten-li pavilion chief. Great leaders use people for their strengths.”

Midway through, Xie stepped out to take a phone call. The moment he left, Qu Tingpu clenched his fists and turned to his three comrades. He swayed side to side, his voice trembling with conviction. “This thing we’ve built for decades—our pride, our dignity—it cannot be lost.”

That night, in the quiet mountain village, neither the old nor the young Communists slept.

The next morning, Qu Tingpu could barely touch his breakfast. He said softly, expressing the shared grief of all four elders: “If I had made mistakes and had to step down, fine—smash me against the south wall, no complaints. But I haven’t. I joined the army at eighteen, worked with the Party for thirty years, and was never thrown off. Now, I suppose, it’s my turn. My heart aches... but I obey the Party Committee.”

Ninghai’s Communists would never forget the day those four elders bid farewell to their posts.

On the stage, Party flags hung high and golden plaques gleamed. The plaques, inscribed personally by Secretary Xie, read: “Meritorious in revolution, high in virtue and respect; yielding to the worthy for modernization, ambitious as ever.”

The four retiring comrades—Wang Yingyun, Sun Chengshan, Wang Shuncheng, and Qu Tingpu—sat on the podium before over a thousand Party members. They gazed at one another in silence.

The hall was completely still—only time moved forward, quietly crossing space.

“Comrades,” Xie said in closing, “our young Party members must learn from these four elders. Lead the masses in economic construction and open a new chapter for Ninghai. Be neither arrogant nor indulgent, neither reckless nor complacent. Unite and progress, and with our hands, build Ninghai into a prosperous, beautiful, and strong town. Victory belongs to the Party and the people—therefore it belongs to us.”

As he finished, the four elders stood, golden plaques in hand, each supported by their chosen successor:  Wang Rongtuan helped Wang Yingyun, Wang Keyong helped Sun Chengshan, Kong Xianglie helped Qu Tingpu, and Wang Zhongwu helped Wang Shuncheng.

They walked together toward the audience, red flowers pinned to their chests—leaving the stage of history with dignity.

The entire hall rose to its feet. Tears shone in the crowd as waves of applause filled the air.

That day, Ninghai’s Party renewed every axle and gear in its great chariot of progress.

Chapter Seven: Salute to the Culture of Xiguan! 

Xiguan Park and the People of Xiguan — Bidding Farewell to an Old Culture

If you, dear reader, have grown weary from this long journey, let us pause for a moment in the first rural park in China built entirely by farmers—the Xiguan Park—and take in what might be called “Xiguan Culture.”

Civilization has taken root in this ancient land. The park regularly hosts farmer dance performances, singing contests, and sports meets. During the 1984 Spring Festival, Party Secretary Li Dehai took home three championships in a row—200-meter sprint, chess, and weightlifting. Even spectators won “encouragement prizes,” overturning the old notion that “jumping around is inferior to swinging hoes.”

Leaving the park, we cross the broad Culture Road, passing the rumble of Xiguan’s “Ten Major Enterprises,” and arrive at the brigade’s dairy farm. Each day, herds of cows produce buckets of fresh milk. Villagers come carrying thermos bottles to take milk home, replacing the sorghum gruel of old. Xiguan residents are changing not only their diets but their understanding of food itself. They now prize nutrition—amino acids, vitamins, protein—over mere fullness.

Mothers and wives no longer cook two dishes in one pot to stretch ingredients, nor must they hide when preparing a better meal than their neighbors—a far cry from the old saying, “Good meals shouldn’t be seen.” The “sneaky daughter-in-law” has vanished. In the village center, the Xiguan Restaurant employs professional chefs serving an array of delicacies. Commune members at home simply pick up the phone: glistening braised shrimp, white hibiscus scallops, bright red sea cucumber, fragrant squirrel fish, even Beijing roast duck and bubbling hotpot all arrive on time.

Well-stocked liquor cabinets gleam with bottles of Moutai and cans of Qingdao beer. The dining rooms’ round tables revolve, laden with abundance.

Next, let us look at Xiguan’s housing culture.

The first generation lived in thatched huts—structures from humanity’s earliest days, with wooden frames and earthen walls, low-roofed and dim. This pattern endured until the late Cultural Revolution. The second generation of homes—brick-tiled bungalows built after Li Dehai became brigade secretary—followed uniform plans: three rooms per household, stoves facing beds, small private courtyards, airy and quiet.

The third generation came after the Third Plenum. Houses had electricity, telephones, and staircases—urban comforts, but without losing rural individuality. Each home included a courtyard and around 110 square meters of floor space, with tiled kitchens, drying-box bathrooms, and bright living rooms. Gas stoves replaced wood fires, and the brigade even built its own gas station. There was no longer any need to paste up pictures of the Kitchen God—habits and beliefs, after all, change with life itself.

Now the prosperous people of Xiguan have leisure for art. In their spacious homes, they display photos of beloved film stars—Zhang Yu, Chen Chong, Cong Shan, Liu Xiaoqing, Zhang Jinling—waiting for the day when these faces might descend from the screen to visit in person. By then, Xiguan’s fourth-generation homes will be complete: villa-style houses of 200 square meters, equal in style and expense to the “General’s” or “Commissioner’s” buildings in the city.

Elderly residents will enjoy pensions like state workers—60 yuan a month, plus seniority bonuses. And in Xiguan, “seniority” is counted not from one’s birth, but from 1978, the year of the Third Plenum—a date of deep symbolic meaning.

The people of Xiguan are forging a new culture—a spiritual civilization rising alongside material prosperity. They have transformed their living space into a vast garden.

The origin of this “Xiguan Culture” can be traced back to one man: Party Secretary Li Dehai.

When the Central Committee issued its new directives after the Third Plenum, many were still asking, “What did they say? What does it mean?” But Li Dehai had already leapt forward at the sound of the starting gun. He became a morning star in Jiaodong’s dawn of reform.

Building upon the village’s solid collective economy, he boldly ventured into heavy industry, creating a series of firsts for the region: the first to reach 1,000 yuan per-capita income, the first “television village,” the first rural telephone exchange, the first farmer-built park, and the first farmer-run secondary school.

Modernization, like a spirited creature, burst into Xiguan and shook the foundations of its ancient traditions.

Li Dehai’s Adages — Bidding Farewell to the Old Almanacs

The old almanacs used to say, “Uphold righteousness, do not seek profit. A gentleman pursues the Way, not food.”

Li Dehai thought differently. When he once spoke with the economist Xue Muqiao, he said that the “big communal kitchens” of the past had crushed people’s initiative. “It wasn’t ‘I want to work,’” he explained, “but ‘make me work.’ Once the cadres weren’t looking, people stopped working altogether. Everyone said the cadres had it hard and the masses were difficult to lead, but no one asked why. After the Third Plenum, that changed. People rediscovered their drive—not because someone was shouting orders, but because the policies themselves encouraged participation.”

He believed the secret lay in the new distribution system, where each person bore responsibility for profit and loss. “It’s a good rice bowl,” he said, “but not an iron one. If you work poorly, you’ll find nothing in it; work well, and you’ll earn as much as a state cadre. That’s why our enthusiasm and service can surpass those of state enterprises. Besides, we’re like small boats—we can turn quickly. We don’t waste time on endless meetings or empty studies that only produce paperwork. If you understand the market, know what consumers need, and fill the gaps, success follows naturally.”

Another old saying warned, “Intellectuals are the stinking ninth category.” Li Dehai dismissed this as well. “Zhuge Liang lived fifty-six years and still died of exhaustion because he refused to use others,” he told a Party Organization official. “Managing people is the heart of enterprise management—it’s my most important duty. Bureaucrats don’t value talent; they want obedience. But physical labor alone only brings slow progress. Talent, on the other hand, is a nuclear reactor—it multiplies results.”

To him, good management required two guarantees: clear responsibility and tangible reward. “Give people both practical authority and direct economic benefit,” he said. “That’s how you unleash potential. In a truly Communist era, people wouldn’t need responsibility systems—they’d act from conscience. Do what must be done, whether someone stops you or not. Refuse what’s not yours, even if it’s offered. That’s what Communist consciousness means. Political work used to mean reviewing files; now it must serve the economy. Ritual governs gentlemen, law governs villains—and sticks,” he added with a grin, “sticks govern donkeys.”

The almanacs also said, “Three years new, three years old, three years patched and mended.” But Li Dehai led by the opposite principle. Speaking with Xinhua News Agency’s director Mu Qing, he declared, “I don’t lead by saving—I lead by consuming. Consumption stimulates production. Living with low standards and calling it virtue is just the mindset of small-scale producers. Frugality has its place, but it doesn’t mean accepting poverty. Hard work and plain living are our tradition, yes—but not our ideal.”

He laughed as he gave an example. “If Xiguan Brigade kept three million yuan sitting in the bank, leadership would be impossible. Fat pigs don’t move. Production, distribution, circulation, and consumption are one continuous process. High distribution requires high consumption. What foreigners enjoy, we Chinese can enjoy too! We even encourage it—buy a color TV and you’ll get a 300-yuan subsidy; refrigerators, fans, recorders, and washing machines are subsidized at 25 percent; new furniture at 10 percent. Today, every household in Xiguan owns a color television and new furniture. That’s what progress should look like.”

Another old adage said, “If you’re a monk for one day, ring the bell for one day.” Li Dehai disagreed. “I owe two lifelong debts,” he told the playwright Mo Yan, “one to my mother, and one to the Communist Party. A Communist must live each day as if it were a lifetime. If your unit fails, that’s not just your problem—it damages the Party’s image. We must live for the cause, and the cause must inspire us. Practice is the only test of loyalty. Even a small contribution to the Party is worthwhile. If every Communist gave something back to our nation’s history, the arrival of Communism itself would come sooner.”

He paused for a moment, then smiled quietly. “To live as a hero and die as a spirit—that’s what it means to dedicate yourself to the Party. We give everything we have. What more should we want?”

The almanacs also preached, “Contentment brings happiness; accepting poverty brings joy.” But Li Dehai found joy elsewhere. “I like talking to writers,” he once told me. “First, because your words don’t decide anything, and second, because you help me see farther.”

He spoke of reform with the same intensity he brought to everything else. “All great reformers had tragic ends. Shang Yang was torn apart by five horses, Wang Anshi lost his post. Generals aren’t afraid to die in battle, and reformers shouldn’t fear losing their heads. There have always been two attitudes toward reform—there were before, there are now, and there always will be. People born with six fingers look strange, but if you cut one off, they feel something missing. Reform feels the same—it hurts, but it’s necessary.”

For him, the foundation of reform was patriotism. “When the country is in difficulty, you must be the first to act. Communists must dare to storm fortresses and sacrifice themselves for progress. Reformers are heroes of the first order. When state enterprises were still burdened, we living men fought against dead systems—how could we not win? Now those burdens are gone, yet some remain numb. Those who truly want to accomplish something must keep pushing. Reform doesn’t wait for perfect certainty. When you’re sixty percent sure, act! Success may come at once. Foolproof plans don’t exist. Step-by-step isn’t reform.”

Before I left, he added one final request: “When you write, don’t turn reformers into saints. Write about their struggles—about why they have to act this way. Let the world see that Chinese farmers have blood, ambition, courage, and brilliance. They are people worthy of humanity’s pride.”

Curves in the Twilight — A Farewell to Feudal Morality

It might well be the first case in the country: a small village spending 200,000 yuan to build two swimming pools.

When the Xiguan swimming pool opened, I happened to be there on July 16. The day before, Party Secretary Li Dehai had inspected the site and felt something was missing. He immediately called the directors of the repair and toy factories.

“Make two diving platforms and two changing rooms,” he ordered. “They must meet specifications, look beautiful, and have presence. I’ll inspect tomorrow morning.”

Neither director dared delay. That night they led their workers in nonstop welding and fitting. By morning, the diving platforms stood completed—shining under the early light like something from an Olympic arena. Two small, villa-style changing rooms painted pale green flanked the pool. When the ribbon-cutting guests arrived, they were stunned.

At first, the village girls hesitated to approach. They glanced shyly at the bare-chested young men splashing in the water, their faces burning. Yet the waves of this new life had a powerful pull.

As the sun sank, two girls finally stepped forward—pioneers of a small revolution. Blushing, they rented swimsuits and life rings, revealing their graceful silhouettes in the evening glow. They had unfastened the old bonds of feudal morality, daring to step into the water and let their skin meet the currents of a new age.

But, as with all pioneers, they met setbacks. One girl’s life ring slipped away, and in the pool—two to four meters deep—she began to sink. Her friend screamed, “Help her!”

At first, the young men in the next pool thought it was a joke. When they realized it was real, they leapt in with all their strength, supporting waists, holding legs, pulling arms, lifting heads. The two girls were saved and helped back to the changing rooms. The rescuers lingered outside, hoping for another glimpse of these brave “pioneers.” But unwilling to face the crowd as near-drowning victims, the girls slipped out quietly through the back door.

The ripples of the incident soon reached the Xiguan Brigade offices. Some called it a scandal; others retold it as an amusing story. A few bold voices advised Li Dehai, “Your pool is too deep— even Mu Tiezhu couldn’t keep his head above water! They say swimming is good for children, but ours can’t even go in.”

Li Dehai listened without replying. After a long silence, he picked up the phone. “Get me the construction team. Manager Xu? Come over.”

Standing beside the pool, he pointed. “Dig another one here—one and a half meters deep. Three days for excavation, five for completion.”

Bulldozers soon roared across the ancient earth, carving out a civilized passage for the sisters of Xiguan.

Within days, the new pool was finished. Now the girls no longer needed to hide their curves in twilight—they could swim proudly under the noon sun. If they wished, they could even wear bikinis. The light of this new civilization belonged not only to their fathers and brothers—it was theirs as well.

The Rising Edifice of Civilization — A Farewell to Ignorance

Li Dehai also founded China’s first rural secondary school at Xiguan.

The Xiguan Farmers’ Secondary School offered majors in township commerce and mechanical manufacturing, enrolling one hundred students in its first class. Each year, another hundred “Sun Zhikuns” would join this unprecedented institution—created not by the state, but by a village production team.

The school represented an investment of 550,000 yuan—an enormous sum for a rural brigade. Today, it stands beside Ninghai Lake, a proud monument of education and progress. Li Dehai himself served as principal, with Zhang Wenjie, president of the Shandong Institute of Economics, as honorary principal. Thirteen university graduates joined the faculty.

Admission was open to high-school graduates or rural youth with equivalent education, all required to pass provincial entrance exams. The program lasted two years. Graduates received official certificates, and those who chose to remain in Xiguan completed a six-month internship before being hired with full secondary-school credentials. During study, the village refunded tuition and provided a 30-yuan monthly stipend.

The deeper purpose of the school was clear: to transform the rural labor force by reshaping its knowledge structure—from physical to intellectual, from agricultural to industrial. Li Dehai saw that part-time courses and short trainings could never meet the long-term need.

Xiguan’s reputation for talent recruitment had already spread across Jiaodong. Here, there were no sectarian boundaries—whoever was capable could become a director or manager, earning the village’s highest salaries. Among the thousand-plus “outsiders” were hidden dragons and crouching tigers: economists fluent in four languages, engineers from national machinery institutes, retired army commissars, Whampoa Military Academy doctors, teachers skilled in “waste-heat power generation,” technicians once sent to labor camps, “rightist” factory directors whose weddings had been attended by Li Zongren, and many others—disillusioned section chiefs, persecuted accountants, girls fleeing arranged marriages, orphans cast out by family. All found new purpose in Xiguan, helping power its rapid rise.

Ignorance, Li Dehai often said, was not merely the absence of knowledge—it was the arrogance of despising knowledge. With party conduct improving and competition between enterprises intensifying, the supply of skilled people was shrinking fast. Xiguan needed its own “cultural fortress”—a place to train future factory directors, engineers, accountants, and technicians.

That was why, in the spring of 1984, even while gravely ill, Li Dehai summoned his factory directors to his bedside. He ordered the lumber factory to make desks, chairs, and beds; the shopping center to supply kitchen and teaching equipment; the general affairs department to procure office tools. And he personally oversaw the recruitment of teachers.

One day, a section chief from the Yantai Vocational Education Bureau told him about a graduate from Harbin Commercial School who was teaching privately at the Xiliugezhuang United Middle School. Li Dehai immediately rose from bed. The school badly needed a commerce instructor. He called for a jeep and brought along retired education official Qu Weitao.

It was already noon. Skipping lunch, sweating under the July sun, he gripped the steering wheel like a frontline driver rushing ammunition to battle. The jeep stopped at a small courtyard. The startled teacher had never seen anyone arrive by car before.

“Teacher Kong,” Li said upon entering, “I’ve come to find talent.”

The teacher’s name was Kong Qingbu, a forgotten graduate of Harbin Commercial School. He had finished his studies in 1957 but had never once used his specialty.

“What courses did you study?” Li asked. “Xiguan Secondary School is opening a commerce department. Would you like to teach?”

Kong hesitated. “It’s been over twenty years. I’ve forgotten most of what I learned—and some of it must be outdated.”

Li smiled. “Forgotten things can be relearned. That’s better than never having studied. You’ll teach while you refresh your knowledge. During breaks, you can visit other schools to keep up.”

Kong’s first wife and three children stood watching from the doorway, eyes full of hope.

“If Xiguan truly needs me,” he said quietly, “and Secretary Li values me, I’ll go. I just don’t know if the school or township will approve.”

“I’ll handle that,” Li said, already turning toward the jeep.

He went straight to the local schools and the township government to finalize the transfer. The entire process—from departure to approval—took only forty minutes.

Three days later, the long-forgotten teacher was sitting as an honored guest in Li Dehai’s home, ready to begin again.

Chapter Eight: Hometown’s Footsteps

On Lunar New Year’s Day, 1984, Ninghai Town held its first-ever farmers’ parade. Beneath the soft blush of an early spring sky, a grand procession of ten thousand people streamed through the town’s ancient yet youthful streets.

At the head marched Ninghai’s farmer honor guard—120 young men and women from township enterprises, dressed in matching general’s wool uniforms and white gloves, waving bright flags to the sound of brass and drums. They played the National Anthem, followed by a Town Song that echoed its melody and spirit:

Forward, heroic Ninghai people—

Guided by the Party’s line, we march toward new eras!

We stand tall between heaven and earth,

Turning seas upside down, swallowing and exhaling the universe,

Daring to be the giants of history.

Courageous and united, we stride toward a radiant future —

Forward, forward, ever forward!

Then came a giant float in the shape of a locomotive marked 2000. Its wheels turned, pistons churning, white smoke billowing from its stack. Its whistle echoed across the town, shaking the earth beneath it—symbolizing history’s train surging ahead at full speed.

Right behind rolled the formation from Xiguan Brigade. Their float, The Great Yellow River, carried men and women dressed as the Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea. For three consecutive years, Xiguan had achieved over one thousand yuan in per capita income; in 1984 alone, they celebrated a net profit of seven million. Their colorful floats radiated confidence—they were truly the locomotive of Jiaodong’s reform.

Close behind came the people of Xinmou, Xiguan’s fierce competitors. Twenty gleaming Happiness motorcycles led their column like a visiting foreign delegation. Behind them, a convoy of Great Liberation trucks displayed rotating towers of the brigade’s industrial products. Banners fluttered above, announcing their new target: 2,000 yuan per capita income in the coming year. Spectators—many from state enterprises—stood speechless along the roadside, astonished.

Then came formations from Dongyoufang, Wangjiyu, Wanghe Village, Kongjiayu, and Wenhua Li—each one like a rolling wave. These were formations of men—farmers of different ages and temperaments—marching in neat ranks, all wearing the same homespun uniforms. Their faces, weathered and bronzed like the figures in the oil painting Father, carried the strength of iron and the calm of stone.

Years of labor had thickened their hands with calluses and their legs with muscle. These were the shoulders that had once carried Daqing’s oil derricks; these were the wrists that had raised China’s five-starred flag over United Nations buildings. Today, those same hands ignited engines, built homes, composed music, drafted laws, and shaped the age itself. Their lifted heads shone like ripened fruit—matured by rain, snow, wind, and frost. Their feet were sharp plowshares, carving furrows of hope across the land, so that no mother would need to weep for survival, no wife would grow old too soon from hardship, no daughter would have to sell her hair, and no child’s dream would be crushed by poverty.

Behind them marched the famed women of Jiaodong—known throughout the region for their virtue and diligence. They too wore matching woolen uniforms, their steps light and firm, their old patched days left behind. These women had come from narrow mill paths, smoky kitchens, and fields heavy with green crops. Their faces no longer bore the marks of hunger or the shadows of submission.

Men could not forget them—their quiet sacrifices in lean years, their careful stitching through hardship, their patience through famine and cold. They had fed their families on melon vines and bark, sent sons and brothers to the army, and kept the home fires burning. Now they marched with straight backs and bright eyes, their hems fluttering like flags in the wind. They walked as if into harvest fields—gathering rice, gathering laughter, gathering the joy and dignity they had long been denied.

The parade unfolded with music and movement—songs, dances, lions leaping, dragons rushing through the crowd. It was the land’s own soul rising from the depths of history. Ninghai boiled with life, with pride, with astonishment. The procession was like a glacier thawing—you could almost hear the collision of ice as it broke free and flowed forward. It was molten lava coursing beneath the surface—its heat blistering the air, tearing through centuries of frozen tradition.

And it moved, always forward and onward. No force on earth could stop it.

This was not the scattered rebellion of Huang Chao, nor the defeated army of Li Zicheng; this was the new generation of Jiaodong—farmers, workers, men, and women—marching beneath the red flag of the sickle and hammer.

Together they entered the great epic of China’s reform, their footsteps echoing toward the horizon of the twenty-first century…

(Originally published in People's Liberation Army Literature and Art, Issue 5, 1985)

Theory Fanatic

Chen Zufen

Dedicated to an Anonymous Economic Theorist

“Here is Rhodes—leap here! Here are roses—dance here!”

— Karl Marx

Daylight Saving Time and the Compulsion of Reform

“Train 35 from Beijing to Xi’an is now arriving at Xi’an. Arrival time: 8:06.”

“Train 238 from Chengdu to Xi’an is now arriving at Xi’an. Arrival time: 9:12.”

“Train 425 from Taiyuan to Xi’an is now arriving at Xi’an. Arrival time: 9:52.”

“Train 53 from Shanghai to Urumqi is now arriving at Xi’an. Arrival time: 11:16.”

“Train 273 from Guangzhou to Xi’an is now arriving at Xi’an. Arrival time: 12:56.”

“Train 4 from Zhengzhou to Xi’an is now arriving at Xi’an. Arrival time: 4:14.”

Each time the announcer finished speaking, restless journalists and scholars jumped to their feet.

In May 1986, trains and planes from every corner of China carried passengers whose hearts had raced ahead of both engine and wing—reaching Xi’an long before their bodies followed. People’s Daily reporters sped from Beijing in Crown sedans, driving day and night toward the ancient capital, while journalists from the Yangcheng Evening News, upon hearing that China’s largest archaeological excavation of the century had just been opened, leapt into cars, caught flights from Guangzhou, and rushed to the site.

The newly unearthed Tomb of a Qin Duke, built 2,600 years ago—offered abundant evidence for studying the politics, economy, and culture of China’s ancient slave society.

According to Marxist historical theory, human history advances in stages, each marked by its tools and technology: bronze for slave societies, iron for feudal ones. In that model, iron belongs to a later, more advanced age; yet the Qin tomb told a different story. Indeed, its more than 180 sacrificial coffins revealed the unmistakable presence of slavery, while its dozens of beautifully forged iron implements suggested a level of production that should have come centuries later.

The find seemed to overturn the tidy categories of Marxist history.

Were the Qin people, then, defying Marxism?

I joined the tide of “excavation fever” passengers heading west—but not to unearth relics. I was searching for a different kind of discovery: a living mind, perhaps the most remarkable economic theorist of our time, whose ideas might underline the theoretical foundation for China’s unfolding reforms.

May 4. Train 279 was scheduled to depart shortly after eight p.m. I hurried aboard, checked my watch—how could it be only seven? Was my clock at home wrong? Had I left an hour early? Impossible. What time was it really—seven or eight?

Two men in blue and gray suits by the window held out their watches: eight o’clock. Yet the one in blue muttered, “I can’t figure out what time it is either.” The one in gray echoed him. Their watches clearly showed eight—so why the confusion? Had I wandered into the plot of an absurdist novel? Another passenger said matter-of-factly, “Didn’t the time move forward an hour?” Forward—or backward? “Daylight saving time started today,” someone finally explained. “Didn’t you move your clock forward? So eight o’clock now is actually nine.” “No,” another corrected, “eight o’clock now is actually seven.”

Right! I hadn’t adjusted my watch; it still showed seven. Once I sorted it out, I noticed the passengers’ eyes—bewildered, anxious, resigned. Behind them lay the psychology of people unwilling yet compelled to adapt: helpless passivity. Daylight saving time had arrived to general dismay. Someone grumbled, “Getting up an hour earlier every day—it’s chaos! We’ll just have to live or die with it!”

Was it really that serious? Daylight saving time wasn’t like a pay raise, where one person gains and another loses—no one actually loses an hour. Perfect egalitarianism! No losses, no costs. Aligning human schedules with daylight would even save energy—hence the name economic time. Germany, France, Britain, Italy, and others had adopted it back in 1916. Yet in 1986, China’s daylight saving time still provoked anxiety and resentment.

“I alone fail to understand why Chinese people remain so calm about old conditions yet grow so distressed over new opportunities; so accommodating to what’s established yet so impatient with what’s emerging.” Naturally, it was Lu Xun echoing this thought in my mind.

Trendy pop songs played in the carriage:

Ali, Ali Baba, Ali Baba is a happy young man.

Whether Ali was happy or not, the tune was infectious; those who caught it became cheerful youth themselves. China’s adoption of daylight saving time was much the same—spirited, restless, intellectually alive.

Then, suddenly, the lights went out. So early? I rushed to the corridor—only nine o’clock, though lights-out should be at ten. Oh, of course! I’d never adjusted my watch. Knowing about daylight saving time wasn’t enough; I’d been too lazy to change the clock itself. Result: darkness fell before I was ready. I set my watch forward one hour. Reform, I realized, often carries an element of compulsion—it never waits for a state of mental preparation before taking effect.

Yet after completing my interviews in Xi’an and returning to Beijing, I found no train delays, derailments, plane collisions, or nervous breakdowns caused by the time change. Life went on as usual—steady, orderly, united. No one even mentioned daylight saving time anymore. It was as if daylight saving time hadn’t started that spring, but had been part of life since time immemorial. Once committed to reform, the Chinese people’s adaptability proved extraordinary.

I arrived in Xi’an—at a moment when China was reforming not only its systems, but its very sense of time.

How to Write About Reform?

A Fugitive

Stepping out of Xi’an Station, I spotted a tall, dark-skinned man holding a sign that simply read “Chen.” It was our prearranged signal—I didn’t know him, but hoped to find him the moment I arrived. Everything should have gone smoothly. Caesar once said, “I came, I saw, I conquered.” I came and I certainly saw—but I was disappointed.

I felt as if I was looking at a fugitive. My first reaction was unease. His long face looked as though it had never been properly washed. He was around fifty, but I suspected he had never really been young—perhaps he’d been born old. His narrow, triangular eyes and high, severe nose gave him a guarded, impenetrable look. Two deep grooves ran from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth, like cuts etched into stone. Even his mouth looked sharp—two thin, parallel blades.

His cloth shoes were patched with bits of leather. I hadn’t seen such shoes in years. Nor had I seen eyes so yellowed they hardly deserved the adjective “white.” Those patches and those eyes together spoke of poverty, endurance, and a stubborn tenacity—of a man shaped by the past. And yet he wore a suit. Not an old one, but of such poor quality—limp, creased, ill-fitting—that it almost repelled me. It looked borrowed in haste, as if for a disguise. His greasy old work uniform, I thought, would have carried a kind of rough dignity instead.

A few strands of hair clung desperately to his bald head. Later he told me he dyed them black—otherwise, they’d be completely white. I wondered why he bothered. Were those few hairs worth the trouble? But he spoke of it with such conviction, as if it mattered—just as he seemed to believe that everything he did mattered.

When I received his first letter that March, I’d decided I would seek him out as soon as I finished my current reportage. I was convinced the trip west would be worth it. His letter had struck me immediately:

“No matter how many heroic images of reformers appear in literature or propaganda, they cannot turn cautious, conservative leaders into true reformers. Such images only encourage those who already support reform. But people who think like reformers are not necessarily reformers themselves, because they don’t hold power. The goal isn’t to persuade those in power to reform, but to bring reformers into positions of power.”

Even so, I knew nothing about the man himself. Was he really worth interviewing? He stood too far from any conventional image of a respectable figure. I was traveling on People’s Literature’s expense account; if the trip turned out to be a waste, the magazine wouldn’t hold me responsible—but I still had to think of my time as a kind of economy.

He grabbed my travel bag and said, “This bag—I don’t need to tell you not to lose it or damage it. You’ll take care of it naturally, because you have ownership, the right to use it, and the right to dispose of it. You’re its master. You don’t need lessons in ‘master consciousness.’ The fact that we’ve spent more than thirty years teaching state enterprise workers to have master consciousness only proves that they aren’t the masters of their enterprises.”

At that, I perked up, remembering his letter—the key to reform, he’d written, was ownership. This man seemed rooted in the past, stubbornly so—but also fiercely, unflinchingly present.

When Spirit Replaces Matter and Thought Defines Reality

A tall, dark-skinned, bald youth once stood before Tiananmen, dressed in a coarse blue shirt and black drawstring pants, both dyed at home. A white cotton string, careless and conspicuous, slipped from his waistband and dangled awkwardly against the black fabric. Yet his expression radiated confidence and pride. It was 1954, the year Masses Daily published the full list of college admissions in Shaanxi Province: first place, Dang Zhiguo of Han City Middle School—admitted to Tsinghua University. His first act after reporting to Tsinghua was to have his photograph taken in front of Tiananmen.

Only the white drawstring disrupted the photo’s solemn dignity—a small absurdity amid grandeur. But it didn’t bother the young Dang Zhiguo. He could simply dip it in ink, that would turn it black. Perfect, problem solved. He had never cared whether hair looked better than baldness, or uniforms better than homespun trousers—appearance had never concerned him. Yet thirty-two years later, upon hearing I was coming to Xi’an to find him, he grew suddenly uneasy about not owning a proper suit and hastily borrowed the one that had repelled me at first sight.

A man who had believed in the power of spirit since youth, in the end, couldn’t even afford the material means for a decent suit.

At sixteen, Dang Zhiguo had already shown the same unshakable faith in willpower over matter. One winter night at Han City Middle School, he and his classmates stayed up late preparing for a school performance. The air was bitterly cold; they needed a fire to keep working. Outside lay half a foot of snow, and the coal pile was four kilometers away. Fetching coal in such weather seemed impossible—thick cotton shoes sank into the drifts and it would be impossible to keep their feet from freezing. The others hesitated.

Then to his classmates’ shock, Dang Zhiguo pulled off his shoes and socks.

“Why are you taking those off?” someone asked.

“To prove that walking in the snow isn’t cold,” he declared.

“Put them back on! We’ll go with you,” they pleaded.

“I said it, so I’ll do it,” he insisted.

And thus, he walked barefoot through the snow. Soon his feet were numb; he could no longer feel the cold. It was only four kilometers—his body survived. But had it been forty, or four hundred, he would still have walked on, until his flesh paid the price for defying material reality.

In the early 1950s, China’s commodity economy was underdeveloped and material goods were scarce. In their place, people sought comfort in the immaterial. They had learned to restrain their desires, to believe that sheer will could make up for what they lacked. For a time, this faith worked. But relying on spirit alone to compensate for material shortage could only last so long. Pushed too far, “spirit over matter” creates the illusion that thoughts alone can shape reality. In time, even some so-called “thorough materialists” forsook the essence of materialism itself—the truth that existence determines consciousness.

Thirty years later, Dang Zhiguo would write in one of his essays: 

“We explain every social problem in terms of social consciousness. Good outcomes are said to come from good thinking; bad outcomes from bad thinking. In this way, every issue is reduced to promoting one idea and denouncing another.”

In 1957, such thinking spread like wildfire through Tsinghua University. Waves of criticism flared up, directed at professors like Qian Weichang and Huang Wanli. Dang Zhiguo climbed onto the podium to defend them. “They’re not rightists!” he declared. He went to the Party Committee office and repeated, “They’re not rightists!”

“At meetings,” he argued, “to truly support the Party’s policies, people must first be allowed to question them. Only by doubting and then disproving one’s own doubts does trust become genuine support.”

He spoke freely, without reservation. Born along the Yellow River, he had the same direct nature as its current. His faith and loyalty to the Party were absolute—so absolute that he never imagined they could betray him. But in a world ruled by the “principle” that consciousness determines existence, those who voiced “rightist ideas” inevitably became “rightist elements.”

Excessive faith in consciousness leads inevitably to its opposite: the destruction of freedom of thought. Soon Dang Zhiguo joined his teachers in disgrace, labeled not only a “rightist” but an extreme rightist.

He had a classmate who stuttered and used to call out to him from afar, “Dang, Dang, Dang, Dang Zhiguo!”—the “Zhiguo” finally squeezed out after great effort. The boy had started calling him simply “Dang” to save time. Now he didn’t dare say even that. He barely spoke at all, and only whispered, when no one could hear, “The prodigal son’s return is worth more than gold.” Two months later, he too was branded a rightist—”prodigal number two.” When the two met, they could only shake their heads and sigh, “The past is unbearable to recall.”

After being labeled an “extreme rightist,” Dang Zhiguo refused food for three days. He couldn’t understand it. How could he be wrong? The Party could not be wrong—of that he was certain. So the fault must lie within himself. Unable to reconcile the contradiction, he first forced himself to accept the conclusion—he was wrong—and only then began to think it through.

Among the so-called “rightists” of 1957 were many of the country’s most forward-thinking people—the true representatives of its advanced productive forces. In 1956, the Party’s Central Committee had called for intellectual freedom with the slogan: “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools contend.” But by 1957, when those flowers began to bloom too freely, the trap was sprung. It turned out that free thought was never really wanted—because independent thinking was no longer useful.

Blind Planning

On the outskirts of Xi’an stood the Xinfeng Brick and Tile Factory. While excavating clay for bricks, workers uncovered a chamber of relics—relics meaning the ashes of the Buddha. In ancient times, receiving and venerating relics was both a royal and religious affair. After Shakyamuni’s cremation, eight kingdoms fought to claim his ashes. Those who failed to obtain any fashioned substitutes from gold, silver, crystal, or agate.

The chamber unearthed by the factory contained such substitutes: crystal “relics” sealed in glass bottles; the bottles placed inside golden coffins inlaid with gilt lions and pearl flowers; the gold coffins enclosed within silver ones decorated with jade, agate, pearls, and cat’s-eye stones. Even centuries after the Buddha’s nirvana, imitation relics were still housed in lavish sanctuaries—testimony to the depth of human devotion.

Perhaps this habit of staking one’s fate on faith was also a Chinese inheritance. The so-called “rightist element” Dang Zhiguo read newspaper reports boasting of harvests of 30,000 kilograms of rice per mu (about 450,000 kilograms per hectare) and 600,000 kilograms of sweet potatoes per mu (about 9 million kilograms per hectare). He could not help but marvel sincerely at the Party’s achievements—after all, such miracles were said to follow the purge of “rightists.” In that sense, he thought, being a rightist was worth it.

Everyday life, however, proved less miraculous. Even shopping became awkward. Before, he could address a shop assistant easily: “Comrade, please weigh this for me.” But now, how could he call anyone comrade? He no longer belonged. To ask bluntly, “Weigh this,” seemed rude. Of course, no shop assistant actually knew he was a rightist. Why keep cursing himself under his breath? Yet Dang Zhiguo truly believed it—because he believed in the Party, believed in every campaign, until he no longer believed in himself.

Since he had been labeled a “rightist,” Dang Zhiguo decided he should at least live up to the role—maintaining what he called a “rightist consciousness” and carrying it out dutifully.

The “rightist” teachers and students of Tsinghua University were soon sent to the Muchengjian Coal Mine outside Beijing for labor reform—drilling rock, setting explosives, hauling coal. By the end of 1960, the expelled student returned to his home county, Han City. But was it still home?

Cotton lay scattered across the fields, unpicked. Sweet potatoes rotted underground while farmers gathered only those on the surface. Work was no longer recorded; food was taken without payment. Every family’s cooking pot had been melted down for steel production.

At the 1959 production rally, local cadres had proudly pledged yields of 500,000 kilograms of wheat per mu—about 7.5 million kilograms per hectare. Yet by 1960, the daily grain ration in Han City had fallen below 250 grams per person. Xi’an Railway Station was packed with famine refugees arriving from every direction.

So these, then, were the fruits of the so-called miracle harvests.

“How bold the people, how fertile the land. The purer the thought, the higher the yield!” went the slogans. Yet no one dared object. The first casualty of the Anti-Rightist Campaign had not been the hundreds of thousands labeled rightists, but something far more fundamental—the right to to free speech.

During the Tang dynasty, poets in Chang’an had written of the silence of palace life:

“Lonely flowers close the courtyard gates; lovely ladies stand within jade halls.

They wish to speak of palace affairs, yet dare not speak before parrots.”

Now, facing a similar “dare not speak before parrots” reality—an age when people feared to speak their minds—Dang Zhiguo, too, began to doubt. His daily food was so meager that he barely had the strength to work, so he turned instead to reading—voraciously, and above all, the works of Marx and Lenin.

Thirty years later, he would write:

“When those who deny the law of gravity leap from a mountain, gravity does not cease to act simply because it is unacknowledged. Likewise, when individual will, national will, or even the collective social will refuses to recognize certain economic laws, those laws do not vanish—they continue to operate, relentlessly and cruelly. Planned blind production is more destructive than anarchic production.”

A planned economy that violated economic law did not commit an isolated mistake—it carried out a systematic, planned violation, and the consequences were accordingly severe.

By then, Dang Zhiguo was changing—moving from “rightist consciousness” to human consciousness. In that lean, resilient body shaped by the Yellow River, self-confidence was returning.

He wrote a couplet for himself:

Keep hundreds of books, yet never be a petty man for a thousand years; Though lacking a few dozen kilograms of grain, remain a great man still.

“Cultural Revolution's” Economic Roots

Chest out, back straight, blood circulating freely, brain receiving an abundant oxygen supply—human cognitive capacity can reach its peak under such conditions. To achieve this optimal state for thinking, Dang Zhiguo made it a practice to sit upright at his bedside reading Capital after each day's labor. Or rather, his need to digest Capital compelled him to discover this optimal posture.

This was February 1970. “Rightist” Dang Zhiguo, having endured the standard Cultural Revolution performances—criticism sessions, public parading, and the rest—had been sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment. “Old Dang,” his fellow prisoners asked, “you received the longest sentence. Why aren't you worried?”

“Worried about what?” he replied.

“When you finish twenty years and get out, you'll be over fifty!” they exclaimed.

“That won't happen,” he said matter-of-factly.

“How won't it? You're thirty-five now—add twenty years and that's fifty-five, isn't it?”

“I won't be imprisoned that long. Twenty years is their decision, but social development doesn't follow their wishes. I believe in historical laws. I'll serve ten years at most,” he explained calmly.

“Then why keep poring over Capital—all those equations and theories? Value, surplus value, wages, labor—you’re buried in it!”

Dang Zhiguo grinned. “I’m just figuring out how much money the capitalists have,” he said. “Someone’s got to manage it after the revolution.”

It was, of course, a joke. But beneath the humor lay a quiet determination: as long as he lived, Dang Zhiguo would study economic problems—especially those long neglected yet bound to demand solutions. The more he observed, the clearer it became to him that behind every social transformation operated the laws of economics. His own fall—from model student to twenty-year prisoner—and China’s plunge into the nationwide frenzy of “abandoning production for revolution” were not simply the results of misguided ideology, but of deep, unresolved economic contradictions.

(At the time, of course, Dang Zhiguo had no way of knowing that China’s “Gang of Four” deliberately shunned all discussion of economics.)

After three years of hardship, some lessons were finally learned, and corrective measures introduced. As the economy began to recover, the superstructure inevitably demanded adjustment. Developed productive forces called for corresponding shifts in production relations. This tension only sharpened the conflict between those pushing for change and those resisting it—giving rise to campaigns denouncing the “three privates and one contract,” condemning “revisionism,” and shouting, “Long live the proletarian dictatorship!”

Fevered minds could no longer see the true causes behind their madness. But Dang Zhiguo understood—not because he was more intelligent than others, but because his own experiences had forced him to ask the questions they avoided.

In 1957, at Tsinghua University, he had watched experts and professors—the very representatives of advanced productive forces—fall under “dictatorship.” He himself had entered Tsinghua’s Water Conservancy Department filled with the same faith and fervor. Inspired by the Soviet novel Far from Moscow, he longed to leave the comfort of big cities for the country’s harshest frontiers. Hardship attracted him; overcoming difficulty attracted him; doing what others could not, dedicating himself to great ideals—these all attracted him.

A provincial top student arriving at Tsinghua with such dedication and enthusiasm was, in his time, a model of the “advanced productive forces” China so often praised—and for that very reason, he too could not escape persecution.

Later, Dang Zhiguo spent years working underground in the coal mines of Tongchuan, Shaanxi. Miners called the job “three stones sandwiching one piece of meat”—a grim metaphor for how easily a man could be crushed.

At the time, coal seams were blasted using a forward detonation method: workers drilled holes into the coal face, inserted five or six explosive charges, and ignited them from the innermost to the outermost. The expanding gases dispersed the force outward, reducing the impact. But Dang Zhiguo began to wonder—what if the sequence were reversed? What if the outermost charge were detonated first, driving the blast inward and concentrating the force?

Defying standard safety protocols, he secretly tested the idea. By the 1980s, the principle of reverse blasting would seem simple, even obvious. But in the 1960s, proposing such a reversal was daring—and nearly impossible to get approved. After a series of covert experiments succeeded, the method was finally recognized and officially adopted.

In 1965, as China’s economy began to recover, Dang Zhiguo joined the local coal industry’s team for disseminating advanced technology. He applied his familiar principle of “concentrated force,” focusing his efforts on one innovation at a time. But just as productive forces began to rise again, another “revolution” swept the country—calls to “Emphasize politics,” and then to “Re-emphasize politics.” Society grew hyper-politicized; everyone was transformed into a political being. Once again, productive forces were forced underground.

In response, Dang Zhiguo organized a small communist study group, tutoring its members in The Communist Manifesto, “The Three Sources and Three Components of Marxism,” and similar texts. Thirty years later, he would laugh at himself, calling those days his “utopian communist phase.” But at the time, his belief was sincere. He wrote long essays criticizing not only the “right,” but also the “left”—though to survive, he could only criticize the left under the guise of attacking the right. This kind of reverse reasoning, he would later say, proved far more dangerous.

Cautious even in idealism, he allowed only unmarried men to join—no one with families who might suffer. It made little difference. He was soon arrested, and his wife was coerced into divorcing him. Thus, he became a single man, burdened with the care of aging parents and a child.

The man sentenced to twenty years in prison now sat upright at his bedside, applying his principle of “concentrated force” once more—this time to the study of Capital. On the title page, he wrote boldly: Marxist-Leninist Dang Zhiguo.

“You’re still reading Marx and Lenin? It was Marx and Lenin they used to lock you up!” someone scoffed.

“No,” he replied evenly. “It wasn’t Marx and Lenin who imprisoned me—it was those who betrayed them.”

Later, he would write:

“The goal of the proletarian revolution is not to remake the world in its own image, turning everyone into proletarians, but to transform itself—so that all people become property owners, and ultimately, so that all means of production are held in common by all. ‘Leftist’ policies claimed to defend the ‘overall interest.’ Yet when the majority’s interests were harmed to varying degrees, these so-called ‘overall interests’ became nothing more than the privileges of a small few. Socialism is no one’s patent; it is the science of humanity’s collective liberation.

“The true measure of a socialist society lies not in its slogans or its self-praise, but in how far each individual has been liberated, how freely each can develop, and how widely prosperity is shared.”

“The twenty-odd years of ‘leftist’ policy,” Dang Zhiguo would later write, “were years spent endlessly launching political campaigns to suppress contradictions and attack the very demands for reform.”

Indeed, the rigid ownership structures at the heart of extreme “leftist” policies failed to resolve the growing contradictions between productive forces and production relations. The Great Leap Forward. Communal mess halls. Cutting capitalist tails. The slogan, “Better socialist weeds than capitalist crops.” A commodity economy was branded as capitalism; a planned economy as socialism. The result of trampling economic laws was predictable: economic laws forced us to pay a devastating price—and in the end, we still had to obey them.

Standing atop Xi’an’s Giant Wild Goose Pagoda—sixty-four meters high—I looked down and recalled Bai Juyi’s verse: “Hundreds of thousands of homes like a go board, twelve streets like vegetable plots.” The ten-kilometer avenue stretching from the pagoda to Xi’an Station ran straight as a ruler’s edge, its grid of streets resembling a vast go board. Xi’an’s cityscape seemed to mirror a rigid, one-directional way of thinking. The view below felt orderly yet lifeless, repetitive, almost suffocating.

It was here, more than a millennium ago, that the monk Xuanzang brought back 657 volumes of Sanskrit scriptures from India and spent ten years translating them. In 648 CE, Emperor Taizong of Tang wrote the preface to Xuanzang’s collected translations. Under Taizong’s rule, economic reform flourished: the equal-field system, the rent-labor-tax law, the opening of foreign trade, and diplomatic exchanges such as Princess Wencheng’s marriage to the Tibetan king Songtsen Gampo—all helped usher in the prosperity of the Tang dynasty.

During that golden age, Chang’an maintained contact with more than a hundred countries and regions. Caravans laden with silk departed from its gates, crossing Central, South, and West Asia on their way to Europe. Along the Silk Road, the ancient city of Loulan—known as the “Pompeii of the Desert”—stood as a vital trading post and commercial hub.

The Tang dynasty’s economic vitality gave rise to its intellectual and cultural brilliance. From childhood, Chinese students recite The Three Hundred Tang Poems and study Tang literature endlessly. Yet, ironically, Tang economics remains almost entirely neglected. Confucian tradition long upheld governance through virtue—rule without economics. But even if a billion people were to memorize The Three Hundred Tang Poems, it would not help them secure a foothold in the modern world.

More than 1,300 years had passed since the Tang dynasty—and over thirty years since Liberation. Yet when people introduced Xi’an to me, they spoke only of the terracotta warriors, or of Li Bai drunkenly roaming Chang’an, or else recited his immortal line: “Chang’an under a full moon, ten thousand homes alive with the sound of pounding clothes.” It all reminded me of the elderly—how easily old minds find comfort in the past.

Even without comparing today’s Xi’an to cities abroad, comparing it only to its own past, the changes seemed modest at best. Someone told me, half-jokingly, “Xi’an looks better underground than above ground.”

One afternoon, I wandered into a suburban restaurant. The floor was littered with bones and food scraps; the tables were greasy; the plastic cups sticky and clouded. Blackened sausages hung beside shriveled preserved eggs. If the poets and scholars of the Tang dynasty could see such a scene, they would sweep their sleeves in disgust and depart at once. Li Bai himself might have roared to the heavens: “Dining is difficult—more difficult than reaching the azure sky!”

Yet the diners of the 1980s ate and drank here with perfect ease. I, however, could hardly swallow a bite. Fleas attacked like bandits—sudden, relentless, impossible to defend against. Should I “adapt to local customs”? Reform my thinking—and my stomach? No. I refused to adapt to conditions that no longer belonged to this age. Chinese people in the 1980s should not still be eating blackened sausages amid bones and scraps. Such establishments must be transformed to meet more civilized needs, not tolerated in the name of endurance.

Dang Zhiguo once wrote in an economic paper:

“When society proceeds not from the facts of the economy but from abstract principles and theories—mobilizing ideological, political, and legal forces to fight against objective economic laws (the ‘Ten Years of Chaos’ being a typical example)—the result is enormous economic loss, a corrupted social atmosphere, and a lifeless depression.”

The Brain is More Important than the Heart

In 1975, when Comrade Deng Xiaoping returned to work, the prisoner Dang Zhiguo felt as elated as if he himself had been released. He believed that at last his own line of thought could align with central policy. After all, once the proletariat had seized power, the development of productive forces was where its fundamental interests truly lay. The country’s turning point had come—surely, he thought, his own would follow. He pinned all his hopes on Comrade Xiaoping.

But what awaited him instead was the Criticize Deng campaign.

Overnight, his hair turned white and thin. The iron-willed, sun-darkened man had suddenly grown old. Once, whether marching in the streets or sitting in his cell, his heart often echoed with the melody of his favorite song, “The Toreador Song.” After that, he could no longer recall the bullfighter’s tune—only the slow, mournful rhythm of “The Song of the Volga Boatmen”: “Ei, ukhnem, ei, ukhnem...”

He was never afraid of death. On the contrary, death was what he feared least. What he truly dreaded was despair—especially that sudden plunge from the peak of hope into the abyss below.

When society turned to denounce the “rightist trend of reversal,” Dang Zhiguo again became the target. A man stripped of all hope can become a dangerous man. “You want to criticize me for trying to bring back capitalism? Fine!” he declared, taking the lead in attacking himself. “I want to restore capitalism, feudalism, even primitive communism! I’m rotten from head to toe—and from toe to head!”

He had no attachment to life. The physical existence of his body had never meant much to him. During the armed clashes in Xi’an in 1967, he once thrust his hands into his coat pockets and strolled toward the center of gunfire, thinking only: What does it feel like to be shot? Looking back later, he admitted it was madness—thirty or forty meters from the firing line, playing games with death. It wasn’t death he feared, but dying without meaning.

In 1968, he was beaten unconscious in a “cow shed.” Half-aware, he heard someone say coldly, “Killing Dang Zhiguo doesn’t matter—his death would be preferable. One less counterrevolutionary.” No, he thought dimly, I can’t die like this. Not so meaninglessly.

Two years later, in 1970, the city of Tongchuan sentenced him to death and reported the case to the provincial authorities. That year, the province submitted seven death lists—but only four names were approved for execution. Dang Zhiguo’s name was fifth. Once again, he survived.

There were quotas for everything then: quotas for labeling “rightists,” quotas for catching “active counterrevolutionaries,” quotas even for executions. People weren’t killed because they were guilty—they were guilty because someone had to be killed.

The first four on the list were executed, and later all were vindicated. If science ever advanced far enough to bring the vindicated back to life, it would be a miracle—but their skulls had been crushed. Resurrection was out of the question.

When he heard of their fate, Dang Zhiguo shuddered. Modern medicine, he knew, judged death not by the heart but by the brain—the brain is more vital than the heart. And when people are forbidden to think, or stripped of the right to think, that too is a kind of death—a spiritual execution.

In the ancient tombs around Xi’an, countless palace maids were buried alive, countless craftsmen entombed with their creations. Yet the Qin dynasty, brutal as it was, had at least evolved—replacing human sacrifice with terracotta sacrifice. Near the tomb of the First Emperor, three great pits stretch across the earth. Pit No. 1 alone holds six thousand clay soldiers and horses—generals, officers, archers, armored troops—arrayed in thirty-eight precise columns to guard not only the emperor’s body, but the rigid permanence of the feudal order itself.

Outside the Terracotta Army Museum, a long line of cars stretched endlessly. The models varied, but their origin was the same: Japan. Each day, the vast museum drew thousands of visitors, among them more than a thousand foreign guests. The Hong Kong Economic Times once joked that President Reagan had flattered China simply by patting the rear of a terracotta horse. French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac went further, declaring that the world already had seven wonders—but the discovery of the Terracotta Warriors, he said, deserved to be called the eighth.

Yet, I thought, uncovering the lessons buried beneath decades of economic mismanagement was far more urgent than unearthing ancient relics. Compared to the lifeless warriors inside the museum, the sight outside—the gleaming procession of Japanese cars—was far more revealing. Those vehicles formed their own kind of army, a living monument to Japan’s economic miracle.

Economic development and political democracy move hand in hand. The vitality of any system lies in its capacity for renewal—in its willingness to select and replace leaders, to adjust and modernize its relations of production. Dang Zhiguo once wrote:

“The expanded reproduction of socialism must also reproduce socialist production relations. We must not only produce more industrial and agricultural goods, but first of all, produce more scientific and rational relations of production.”

Relations of production—those, too, must evolve.

Diplomas Can Be Reissued, Thinking Cannot Be Repeated

Living brains cannot stop thinking.

Before the 1978 National Science Conference, the prisoner Dang Zhiguo had written to propose a contribution of his own. From within his cell, he composed papers such as “Research on the Optimal Axial Thrust of Rock Drills” and “An Evaluation of Pizzigosto’s Wind Drill Axial Thrust Formula.” He also invented practical tools: water-glass lighters, file-disk restoration methods, automatic dehydration screens—several original innovations born of confinement.

When he was released in 1980, his face still swollen from years of hardship, he immediately began searching for technical materials. Soon he was publishing paper after paper—more than ten in total—on heat treatment, bearings, electric furnaces, and pneumatic tools.

By the end of 1984, he was transferred to the Xi’an Municipal Institute for Civil Coal Research. The former Tsinghua Water Conservancy student had already spent ten years underground, operating pneumatic drills in the coal mines. In those days, the drills had no supports; when drilling upward, one could stand on a stool or a rock, but Dang Zhiguo found that too slow. Always impatient to do more, he hoisted the thirty-kilogram drill above his head, using his own tall frame as a living support. Ten years of noise—1,800 vibrations per minute—left his body permanently damaged. Why, he wondered, must miners endure such torment from machines designed to serve them?

Determined to improve them, he designed a new pneumatic rock drill and sent his blueprints to factories capable of production. Technicians grasped the design immediately, but factory leaders dismissed it: “These are only drawings—there’s no working prototype.”

Dang Zhiguo had already verified his principles with data, but the user units refused to get involved: manufacturing was someone else’s problem. Larger factories hesitated too. Producing a new design required costly new equipment—and risk. No one was willing to take the risk.

A factory in Luoyang finally showed some interest. Dang Zhiguo used his accumulated family visit leave—four years’ worth—to travel there. He stayed in a cheap hotel, surviving on four baked wheat cakes a day. His frugal diet caught the attention of a fellow lodger—a township factory director from Taixing, Jiangsu. First moved by Dang’s four cakes, then impressed by his rock drill, the director decided to bring the project back to Jiangsu.

The small factory was eager, investing twenty to thirty thousand yuan at once. Yet producing such a technically demanding drill was beyond its capacity. Larger institutions with real research budgets refused to include it in their plans. Would Dang Zhiguo have to raise the funds himself?

Professors from Tsinghua sent what they could. Huang Wanli had already contributed a hundred yuan; Qian Weichang promised to send more. But after decades of “cutting capitalist tails,” China had only just begun to cautiously suggest that some people might “get rich first.” Where was Dang Zhiguo supposed to find these “first-rich” people? How could he possibly raise tens of thousands of yuan?

He had once believed that release from prison meant freedom. Freed in 1980—ten years before his sentence should have ended—he now wondered: if the conviction had been wrong, could those stolen years ever be returned to him? Of course not.

During one of the later “rectification” campaigns, an official famously confused the characters for huan (fantasy) and you (youth), assuming they meant the same thing. When lecturing men like Dang Zhiguo, he proclaimed with great authority, “All fantasies are youthful thoughts—and all youthful thoughts are fantasies!”

A “Dang Zhiguo Special Case Group” of five people cost more than 10,000 yuan a year. Someone ought to have calculated how many such “special case groups” and “investigation teams” existed across the country—how much manpower and money they consumed, how few problems they solved, and how many new injustices they created. Should those who violated human rights not be held legally accountable? Should those who squandered public funds not bear economic responsibility?

The vast sums wasted on pointless investigations—if redirected toward innovation—could have produced not only new technologies but also renewed energy and purpose. Yet spending public money to persecute people for personal gain caused no one any guilt, while taking initiative to improve an enterprise was considered unnecessary trouble. After all, what personal benefit was there in helping an enterprise create something new?

Standing before the bronze chariot and horses from the Second Qin Tomb, I could not help but sigh. What craftsmanship—over two thousand years ago! More than three thousand components, each cast with alloy ratios precisely suited to its function. Bronze smelting and casting techniques nearly identical to those we use today. Mechanical joints—keys, hinges, couplings—still recognizable in modern machines. Over 2,500 gold and silver ornaments adorned the horses, and after two millennia underground, the bronze chains still moved freely; the chariot doors and windows still opened smoothly.

Our ancestors had achieved such technical mastery before the birth of Christ. What, then, of progress today—two thousand years later? Whether progress comes or not, salaries are still paid.

I opened Tsinghua University Graduation Certificate No. 002150. The photograph inside looked like an artifact dug out of the earth—a face lined and weathered far beyond its years. Perhaps the fifty-something Dang Zhiguo really did look that old; or perhaps a middle-aged face simply felt out of place on a diploma from the 1950s. In any case, the Tsinghua student of that era finally received his long-delayed diploma in the 1980s. But by then, he no longer wished to devote himself solely to technology.

Diplomas can be reissued; ideas cannot be relived. After decades of hardship and reflection, he had come to believe that before production itself could progress, one had to first confront the relations of production.

Enterprises Without Masters

Why don’t state enterprises value innovation or talent? Why does rural reform surge ahead while urban reform lags behind? Why are township enterprises brimming with energy while state enterprises remain stagnant? What lies at the root of the problem?

Dang Zhiguo’s answer was simple: “Enterprises lack true masters.”

But weren’t workers supposed to be the masters of their enterprises? Since liberation, they had been told to “become the masters.” More than thirty years had passed—shouldn’t that promise have been realized by now? Yet, as Dang Zhiguo observed, “Three decades of relentless education on ‘master consciousness’ among state enterprise workers proves precisely that they are not the masters of their enterprises. When a young couple buys a color television, their sense of ownership drives into their minds like iron nails before they even leave the store—no ideological training required.”

His point was clear: if consciousness grows out of material conditions, then “master consciousness” cannot be taught through slogans—it must be grounded in real ownership.

The effects of this disconnect were visible everywhere. When the power went out in a factory or a machine broke down, workers would often cheer and spread the news with delight. They could go home early and still receive a full day’s pay. Whether the enterprise made a profit or suffered a loss had little bearing on their own welfare. Their indifference, Dang Zhiguo argued, was not a moral failure but a reflection of the ownership system itself—an economic structure that separated responsibility from reward.

Were enterprise leaders, then, the true masters? Some were undoubtedly competent. But why, then, did newspapers so often carry reports like these?

“Xinhua, Changchun, July 21: In less than two years, nine mid-level cadres at the Jilin Ferroalloy Plant were promoted an average of 5.28 grades each, with the highest rising 7.5 grades. In 1984, they each received more than 1,770 yuan in bonuses—4.4 times the average worker’s bonus.” (Xi’an Evening News, July 22, 1985)

“Anshan Steel Research Institute’s Union Experimental Plant awarded three leaders excessive bonuses ‘by rank,’ leading to serious misallocation. In less than nine months, each averaged over 8,600 yuan in bonuses—nineteen times what workers received, creating widespread resentment.” (Workers’ Daily, August 6, 1985)

Leaders who enrich themselves at the expense of both the state and the workers, displaying flagrant irresponsibility, can hardly be called the masters of their enterprises. As Dang Zhiguo put it, “A true master does not steal from his own property.”

He went further: “Masters are the embodiment of ownership. Their personal interests and fate must be bound to the rise and fall of the enterprise itself. Their stake cannot be symbolic. For instance, if a factory has ten million yuan in capital and employs one thousand workers, each worker effectively operates ten thousand yuan in production assets. But if ownership is shared only abstractly—spread across a billion citizens—then each worker’s share amounts to just one-hundredth of a yuan. If the factory fails, he loses a single cent. How, then, can we expect him to regard the enterprise’s survival as a matter of life and death?”

Only when a worker’s livelihood genuinely depends on the enterprise—when his personal fate is tied to its success—does he become a true master, not merely one in name. The rights of such a master must include participation in management and decision-making, distribution according to labor, and a fair share of profits based on ownership.

The rural household contract responsibility system had succeeded so brilliantly that some began to see contracting as a universal cure—something that could simply be extended to cities. Yet when “contracts entered the cities,” the results fell far short of expectations.

Dang Zhiguo identified the cause. Rural contracts worked because rights and responsibilities were aligned: when production increased, farmers profited; when it declined, they bore the losses. In state enterprises, however, managers were given responsibility without the capacity to bear it—without the ability to absorb losses—creating a deep structural flaw. As one factory director admitted, “I caused hundreds of thousands in losses to the state. But what can be done? Even if I sold my fifty-odd kilos of flesh to Sun Erniang for meat buns, it wouldn’t make up the money.”

Without the capacity for responsibility, irresponsibility thrives. It’s like asking a three-year-old to buy a television—if he loses the money on the way home, what can you do? A child, after all, cannot be held accountable.

Dang Zhiguo extended his analysis further, arguing that the lack of vitality in state enterprises was not unique to socialism—it was a global problem that afflicted capitalist economies as well. In theory, we claim that workers are the masters of their enterprises, yet in practice we cannot even locate where those masters’ property rights reside. Masters, he insisted, are not abstract ideals but material realities. Only when workers’ concrete economic interests are tied to their enterprises—when their fortunes rise and fall together—will they rediscover a true sense of ownership, responsibility, and purpose.

“Back Door” and Economic Laws

The masters were absent, and the back doors stood wide open.

Certain scarce goods—popular bicycle brands, for instance—could only be purchased with ration tickets. The tickets themselves held no intrinsic value, but once they became accessible through back channels—gifts, bribes, connections—they transformed into a form of currency. The more such exchanges proliferated, the more valuable the tickets became. Eventually, a single ticket could fetch over one hundred yuan.

The shortage of premium bicycles could have been resolved through straightforward price adjustments. If a bicycle originally sold for 150 yuan, raising the price to 200 or 250 would have naturally balanced supply and demand, with the additional revenue funding expanded production.

Instead, we relied on ration tickets to control distribution. The consequence? The hundred yuan barred from entering through the front door simply flowed through the back—into private hands. The bicycle's full market price was realized regardless, only through a wasteful and corrupt route.

Economic laws, Dang Zhiguo observed, do not bend to human will; rather, they reshape it. He would later publish a paper titled “Economic Laws in Action: On Back Doors as Forms of Economic Law Operation When Obstructed.”

“Back doors and other corrupt practices,” he wrote, “are social evils the state has effectively purchased at enormous cost. They represent how economic laws persist when obstructed—and serve as punishment for rigid notions like 'price stability' or 'equal exchange' that deny the law of rent. People can alter only the form through which economic laws operate, never the laws themselves.”

I walked along Xi'an's ancient city walls—11.9 kilometers in circumference, twelve meters high, fourteen meters wide at the top. Massive and imposing, they conveyed both security and enclosure. Constructed under the Ming dynasty's Zhu Yuanzhang, who advocated “Build high walls, store ample grain, and claim power slowly,” the fortifications embodied a defensive mentality that echoed through subsequent centuries. Later, the slogan evolved: “Dig deep tunnels, store ample grain, seek no hegemony.” Yet even without pursuing hegemony, deterrence remained elusive—and to this day, people still required grain tickets simply to eat.

In downtown Xi'an, decommissioned air-raid shelters had been converted into dingy amusement halls. The walls were peeling, and tinny disco music reverberated through the concrete tunnels. Under harsh fluorescent lighting, ticket-sellers touched up their makeup with pocket mirrors—performing rituals of glamour amid squalor, as though delivering a public tutorial in cosmetics rather than selling admission.

Material conditions shape material life—and the spiritual atmosphere that accompanies it. Economic laws permeate every domain of existence.

Nowhere were they more conspicuous than in housing.

When I visited Dang Zhiguo's suburban home, I found a roof constructed of split tree trunks, one beam inscribed: “September 3, 1985, noon, the day of house-raising—auspicious.” Unmistakably a farmer's dwelling. The twenty-square-meter room would have commanded 35 to 45 yuan monthly rent elsewhere, but its proximity to the railway—where trains clattered incessantly—and windows perpetually sealed against coal dust from a nearby plant reduced the rent to just 25 yuan.

“This,” Dang Zhiguo explained, “is the law of rent—determined purely by supply and demand. Yet housing commercialization remains difficult to implement. There's always resistance. Human nature follows self-interest. In some localities, constructing a house takes one year, but allocating it takes two. Distribution proves harder than construction because administrative allocation violates both rent laws and economic principles.”

“When bureaucratic methods replace market mechanisms in housing distribution,” he continued, “people resort to paying 'activity fees' and bribes instead. These are merely transformed expressions of the rent society has voluntarily forsaken. The bribe amount isn't dictated by the greed of privilege-holders or the wealth of supplicants—it's determined by the law of rent itself and by the degree to which the system obstructs it.”

Before reaching Dang Zhiguo's home, I had witnessed farmers throughout the area constructing houses—commercial housing, naturally. The roads teemed with people, bricks, cement, timber. My car nearly collided with a cart laden with bricks. The scene suggested an unspoken competition, its invisible commander unmistakable: economic law itself.

The Limits of Ideology

Dang Zhiguo, straddling both the technical and the theoretical, pursued his dual course—researching pneumatic rock drills while drilling ever deeper into the bedrock of economic theory. His papers—”On the Scissors Difference,” “Economic Laws in Action: On Back Doors as Forms of Economic Law Operation When Obstructed,” and “An Important Economic Law: On the Basic Laws of Distribution”—were published successively, though all in technical journals. This was not necessarily the result of economic obstruction, he noted wryly, but rather of an obstructed academic climate.

Dang Zhiguo held firmly to the baton of economic law, yet heard discordant notes reverberating through the ideological realm.

Enterprises under public ownership, he argued, could operate normally and develop vigorously only under specific historical conditions—during the “golden age” following revolutionary victory, when both the ruling party and the populace remain animated by revolutionary passion and idealism. But as that fervor cools, supplanted by calculations of self-interest, and as revolutionary ideals pale before daily realities, the structural weaknesses of such enterprises inevitably surface.

At one point, we reduced communism to a form of small-producer egalitarianism, declaring it an instantly attainable paradise. When this naive vision crumbled under reality's weight, it gave way to the opposite extreme—a grim insistence that “class struggle will continue for ten thousand years.” This produced a frenzy in which people turned against one another. Since no one could verify the state of communism ten millennia hence, such grandiose rhetoric could no longer sustain genuine enthusiasm.

When we discuss the future today, we speak predominantly in terms of output and income—of material comfort and abundance. Rarely do we ask what socialism itself will become: what our systems of ownership, production, distribution, and governance will look like; what forms family, community, and human relationships will assume; or how our modes of thinking will evolve.

If we continue filling people's minds with visions of material plenty while neglecting spiritual impoverishment, how can we expect mere moral exhortation to sustain them?

We often hear the criticism that people “only care about money.” But rights and obligations are inseparable. When rights exceed obligations, irresponsibility and abuse of power follow; when obligations outweigh rights, people withdraw from responsibility altogether, becoming indifferent while seeking compensation through other means. We can label this “low consciousness” or “backward thinking,” but moral condemnation and political criticism cannot remedy structural flaws. Dismissals and legal punishments may deter future misconduct, but they do nothing to recover economic losses already incurred—and in any case, the dismissed positions never truly belonged to those individuals in the first place.

Ultimately, “master consciousness” is not primarily a problem of thought, but of ownership. Only when each member of society understands what socialist ownership means for them personally will they genuinely care about the present and future of the socialist economy—will they exercise their rights to manage, to labor, and to share in distribution as true masters.

Otherwise, repeated exhortations about “master consciousness” only provoke bewilderment—like being stopped on the street by a stranger who lectures you on cherishing your own body. If people are in fact the masters of society, and if every citizen tangibly benefits from that status, they will naturally care about the rational use of resources and the fate of socialism itself.

We cannot equate communism, the science of a distinct stage in human development, with ancient notions of self-denial or virtue, such as “putting the public above the private.” The mutual care found in primitive communal life, “not only loving one’s own parents, not only caring for one’s own children,” was not a matter of moral choice but the product of shared ownership of the means of production. Communism, too, is not a question of moral virtue but a material science, a framework for understanding how production and social relations evolve.

Even the comrade who sells vegetables in the market, skilled in mental arithmetic, may not grasp higher mathematics; similarly, moral passion without economic understanding cannot sustain socialism. Ideals and enthusiasm must emerge from the economic foundations of scientific socialism—they cannot be grafted onto outdated systems. As Lenin wrote, “To rely on faith, loyalty, and other fine spiritual qualities is politically unserious.” We might add: it is also economically unserious.

This does not mean dismissing the role of ideas but recognizing that consciousness is inseparable from interest. As Marx wrote, spirit was cursed from the beginning—forever entangled with matter. Apart from concrete material interests, it is impossible to resolve all problems through ideology alone.

In his writings, Dang Zhiguo was, ultimately, attempting to reaffirm a fundamental materialist truth: existence determines consciousness.

An Economist with Unruly Finances of His Own

Dang Zhiguo's research on socialist ownership relations emphasized the need to distinguish clearly between public and common ownership. Marx and Engels had written in The Communist Manifesto:

“In the course of development, when class distinctions have disappeared and all production is concentrated in the hands of associated individuals, public power loses its political character.”

To Dang, this meant that scientific socialism's true form of ownership lay in the hands of “associated individuals”—that is, common ownership. In his view, socialist common ownership was a necessary precursor to socialist public ownership, and public ownership, in turn, was the inevitable extension of common ownership. Public ownership, he argued, could not be measured; common ownership could, because it was quantifiable at the level of individuals.

Public or common—Dang Zhiguo himself owned nothing.

After his release from prison in 1980, he moved six times before settling in a farmer's house near the coal hills and railway tracks—”in accordance with the laws of rent,” as he would say dryly. Du Fu had once sighed, “If only I had a thousand mansions, to shelter all the world's poor scholars in joy.” The modern poor scholar Dang Zhiguo could have fit all his possessions—along with those of his parents and son—onto a single Dongfeng tricycle. Moving from one borrowed room to another, at least, posed little difficulty.

Even in 1986, such pockets of urban poverty persisted in China. His room was a landscape of planks and rope. Old boards laid across benches served as beds for him and his son. His parents slept on a borrowed plank bed, its legs bound together with rope. Even the desk was held together with string; above it, a makeshift lampshade rolled from cigarette paper dangled from a cord.

Planks, rope, and scraps—these had accompanied him through thirty years of struggle: from spiritual to physical beatings, from the binding of minds to the binding of bodies. At last he had “settled,” still among planks and rope. The sight filled me with bitterness. Engels had once observed that Marx was the greatest economist—yet his own finances were a disaster. Dang Zhiguo, it seemed, had inherited the same contradiction.

One afternoon, a friend, attempting to make conversation, remarked, “It's a beautiful day today.”

“In 1970,” Dang replied quietly, “my brother's only wish was for good weather.”

He continued: “They had already decided to execute me. What could my family do? Only hope to collect my body afterward. My brother borrowed a cart, but it's 150 or 200 kilometers from my hometown, Hancheng, to Tongchuan. If it rained, the roads would turn to mud—he'd have had to drag the cart through it. Since I was certain to die, the family could only pray for fair weather.”

He spoke lightly, as though recounting someone else's story. Perhaps he had endured too much tragedy to feel it anymore. On the wall above his desk hung a portrait of another Hancheng native—Sima Qian, composing the Records of the Grand Historian in prison. In his own cell, Dang Zhiguo had read Capital three times through and devoured everything by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao that had reached the prison library. New inmates often asked him to recite “On Contradiction” and “On Practice” from memory—and he could.

But reading constituted only half his life; the other half was writing. In his plank-and-rope home, the sole modern object was a red suitcase—a gift from his sister—containing all his manuscripts on economic theory. Among the essays on “Scissors Differences” and “Ownership Systems,” one treasure stood out: a battered hardcover copy of Jane Eyre. It was his fourth. Each previous copy had been confiscated, and each time he had purchased another. Even with debts exceeding a thousand yuan, he had bought the book again—proof, perhaps, of his devotion to Jane herself. I glanced at the heap of worn clothes beside the suitcase and thought, half in jest, that Jane Eyre was the wife of this solitary man.

No personal story, he believed, could transcend the social conditions of its time.

His fate, he said, had always moved in lockstep with the nation's. Before 1957, as China developed, so did he. In 1957, as the country suffered setbacks, he fell too. In 1962, when recovery began, his “rightist” label was removed. In 1965, during the nation's brief prosperity, he joined the Advanced Technology Dissemination Team and finally saw his skills utilized. Ten years of catastrophe followed—and he spent them all in prison. Now, in reform-era China, as the nation grappled with hardship, his own work likewise met resistance.

“The degree of social liberation in this country is the measure of my own,” he once reflected. “To liberate oneself, one must liberate all humankind. For me, that isn't an abstract ideal—it's an inescapable fate.”

As he often said, “We pursue socialism not because it is 'superior,' but because it is a law. Superiority belongs to plans; laws are followed because they must be. You can resist them, but you will obey them in the end.”

Yet even he admitted he had not achieved full liberation—nor could anyone, as long as productive forces remained constrained by outdated ownership structures. “Our systems,” he observed, “are suited to political movements, not to economic development.”

By then, Dang Zhiguo had become a theoretical zealot. Every conversation, however trivial, returned to systems, ownership, and laws. “What's your view on this problem?” he would ask abruptly, cornering acquaintances with questions most had never considered.

He spoke with fervor, his face flushing as he pressed his point. Some humored him—”Yes, yes, of course!”—while others shrank into awkward silence, transformed from adults into schoolchildren under examination.

His mind was a machine of political economy—ceaseless, restless, exhausting. But most people craved lighter fare: anecdotes, gossip, daily matters—food, family, sleep. He, by contrast, seemed to subsist on politics and rest on economics. He could fascinate and intimidate in equal measure. His ideas were often original, his manner often forceful. Discussion with him was not dialogue but confrontation.

He was not ordinary—but not abnormal either. Extraordinary, perhaps, in his intensity.

He cared deeply for the people, yet the people often rejected his concern. He wanted them to see beyond surface phenomena to underlying structures—but most preferred venting emotions to engaging intellect. It was easier to discuss appearances than to contemplate essence.

Dang Zhiguo was a man no computer could model—volatile, unsophisticated, yet capable of what he called “small deviations, great results.” Every revolution, he argued, required a driving social force: poor peasants for land reform, Red Guards for the Cultural Revolution. “Today's reform,” he said, echoing Deng Xiaoping, “is the second revolution. What it needs are penetrating economic theorists.”

I had gone searching for him—but in truth, he had found me first, through a letter that moved me profoundly. Normally, when interviewing people who had suffered, I wept easily. But with Dang Zhiguo—the economist with unruly finances—I remained dry-eyed. Was it because he needed no pity, or because his suffering had long since exceeded the scale of sympathy?

“I'm not a suffering scientist or a technician to be pitied!” he burst out. “I'm a hero—a man—a thinker! Especially an economic thinker!”

Thoughts never granted him rest. At times, they made him forget reality; at others, reality drove him back toward his ideals. Recently, he had completed another paper, “The Development of Socialist Ownership Relations.” Its ideas were bold, original, and provocative—perhaps imperfect, perhaps one-sided, but alive with insight. “Even half-truths,” he said, “can awaken thought.”

After all, the “Double Hundred” policy—”Let a hundred flowers bloom, a hundred schools contend”—had been in place for over thirty years. A more open atmosphere was finally emerging, one that could nurture intellectual growth rather than stifle it. Dang Zhiguo's passion for theory, his very zealotry, was no accident. Suppression only delays emergence; it never prevents it.

Could China, he wondered, establish a “communist special zone”—a space to practice new economic theories before dismantling the old? “We can't destroy first and build later,” he argued. “We must build first—then destroy.” Only through experimentation could the “spring wind” of reform melt the ice of habit.

Was he still a utopian? Perhaps. But if Marx himself were alive, Dang Zhiguo would have asked him directly: “Comrade Marx, what do you think of China's reforms in the 1980s?”

And Marx, he imagined, would have smiled and said, “You are asking the wrong question. China's reform can only be answered by the Chinese people themselves.”

Reform, Dang Zhiguo believed, demanded not just policy but theory—and theorists.

Not long after, Wen Wei Po ran a headline: “Can We Produce a Great Economist?” The article declared that this question was “even more urgent for China today than whether we can produce an Einstein, a great philosopher, or a great writer.” It continued:

“China's comprehensive reform of its economic system should be the soil from which great economists emerge. The right time and the right place are calling for the right people.”

In Aesop's Fables, a boastful man once claimed he had made a great leap on the island of Rhodes. Marx quoted this story in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte:

“Here is Rhodes—leap here! Here are roses—dance here!”

Life itself, Dang Zhiguo believed, was delivering that same challenge.

(Originally published in People's Literature, Issue 7, 1986)

A Record of Sacred Sorrows: A True Account of a School System in Crisis

Zhang Min

Long did we stand on the shoulders of our forebears —

until the moment their burden broke,

and our footing slipped toward ruin.

—Author's Epigraph

In the sixteenth year of the reign of Duke Ai of Lu, Confucius lay dying. 

Leaning on his staff by the doorway, he sang, “Will Mount Tai collapse? Will the beams and pillars fall? Will the philosopher wither?” As the words left his lips, he began to weep. Seven days later, he passed away.

Throughout his life he endured indifference, wandering from state to state like a forsaken dog—fully aware that his teachings might dissolve into dust, yet refusing to relent until sorrow finally claimed him. And yet, in a paradox of history, the civilization he mourned as declining continued its long march for two thousand more years, borne forward—however imperfectly—by the momentum of his thought and the force of his example.

Even now, we cannot fully judge the ultimate merits or limits of Confucius’s legacy. But we can discern one truth: the endurance of any civilization rests not on wealth or power, but on the strength of those who carry its values across generations—a mysterious force of transmission that shapes history from within. This force, which sustains and continually renews a culture, is nothing less than sacred. It is through this sacred continuity that our civilization became one of the world’s longest enduring.

Which brings us to the present: when did this inheritance begin to feel like a burden, and our civilization itself begin to seem antiquated? We speak tirelessly of renewal, of standing with confidence among the nations of the world. Yet we must ask whether that sacred force of transmission—that tenacious spirit embodied by Confucius the educator, who “blamed neither Heaven nor man”—still lives within us today.

I. Civilization's Rupture

All Hope Their Children Will Soar Like Dragons

My son was six years old. As I imagined this lively little boy soon bound by the “shackles” of a schoolbag, my heart grew heavy. Everyone must pass through this civilized “purgatory”—I understood that. Yet after surveying the admissions landscape, I realized that I, like my innocent son, understood nothing about the ordeal families now face when trying to enroll a child in a Beijing elementary school.

The sweltering months of July and August—already “dark” and merciless for students preparing for university entrance exams—had become equally anxious, even terrifying, for young parents who had poured their love into prenatal education long before their children were born.

Year after year, during this season, countless trembling hearts prostrate themselves before the threshold of the temple of education. Only then does its sanctity appear absolute. And now, the moment had arrived for me to lead my own son to kneel before it.

In that haze of anxiety, a memory surfaced: my father taking me to school for the first time. I had skipped through the schoolyard, carefree, the gate looking perfectly ordinary.

Yet for our generation, guiding a child through a school gate is anything but ordinary. It determines not only a child’s future but seems, somehow, to reflect a parent’s own honor or disgrace. Schools are divided into top-tier schools and ordinary schools, and this crucial decision appears to predetermine a child’s prospects, rank, and social standing. For many young parents, securing a place in a top-tier school feels almost like securing a second life for themselves.

Yet this power to decide was nothing like the college entrance exam, where students compete head-to-head. Instead, fate was governed by household registration: children could only attend schools within their residential district. And so, each year in January and February, quiet currents of household-registration transfers began to ripple across Beijing.

It was a farce filled with ingenuity, calculation, and deception. Some parents with “foresight” transferred their household registration to relatives long before their children were born—ensuring that the newborns would inherit a coveted school district from the moment they opened their eyes. Others, with relatives living in desirable districts, arranged swaps of household registrations and property certificates with ease. 

Only those without friends or relatives in key districts suffered. Some exchanged a 40-square-meter apartment for a 27-square-meter one simply to gain district residency. In Beijing, where every square meter is precious, sacrificing thirteen square meters for a child’s registration—though a loss—was done willingly.

Others fared even worse. One shop clerk near Huangchenggen Southeast, desperate to get his child into the right district, repeatedly exchanged housing on paper—only to make a final swap with someone living in privately owned property. He surrendered his own public-housing unit, but the other party refused to let him move into their private home. In the end, he had nowhere to go and slept in the doorway of the district office. Such is the heartbreak of parents.

Real transfers, fake transfers, invented relatives, sham divorces and marriages—people in Beijing thought of every possible scheme. One mother led her child to a top-tier school in tears, claiming the father had died tragically and that they had no choice but to live with an aunt. How could the school refuse? But after the child was admitted, he cheerfully told people, “My dad’s alive and well.”

These were the tactics of ordinary families; others used far less modest methods. But for most parents, household registration was no trivial matter. When one work unit moved its main entrance to another street during construction, chaos erupted—because the new gate number could indicate a different school district.

Teachers at top-tier schools knew these schemes all too well. Every year after February, they went door to door verifying household registrations, forced to develop a few Sherlock Holmes–like skills. By the time summer scorched the city, school gates were jammed with anxious crowds. Teachers braced themselves for the yearly onslaught—an ordeal that felt like both a disaster and a battle.

Parents surrounded them, pleading, crying, arguing, staging scenes, bowing, trying to kneel, thrusting household-registration booklets into their hands. They offered up their burning parental devotion, soaked in bitter tears, hoping that emotion, promises, flattery, or outright fabrication might soften a teacher’s resolve. Favors were called in from every corner of the city—from vegetable vendors, housing bureaus, police stations, gas stations, grocery stores, and neighborhood committees.

Complaints flooded the district education bureaus. Parents surged in like relentless tides. Bureau chiefs, like fugitives, hid behind sunglasses to avoid being recognized. “Are you Director So-and-so?” someone would ask—and once identified, they were instantly besieged. Some parents blocked officials inside their offices, refusing to let them work or go home; others simply placed their children in their arms and walked away. Children played in the courtyard, returning only when thirsty or hungry. Education bureaus turned into makeshift kindergartens.

And even if teachers and bureau chiefs had a hundred mouths to argue with, they still couldn’t convince parents to let go of their fixation on top-tier schools—because the very existence of those schools was mandated by policy. Parents didn’t see that these schools had limited capacity: if they were flooded, the qualities that made them “top-tier” would quickly vanish. If the suffocating crowds of big-city life—its packed stores, subways, parks, and stations—poured onto school campuses, then the solemn act of a child heading into class would become no different from squeezing onto a bus or lining up for a public restroom. The distinction between top-tier and ordinary schools would simply collapse.

Yet as parents exhausted every means to push their children into top-tier schools, the district education bureaus found themselves equally helpless: the long-abandoned dual-shift system—where schools must run separate morning and afternoon sessions because there are too many students and too few classrooms—was about to return on a massive scale. Family-planning departments had already warned that, starting this year, the second major birth peak since the founding of the People’s Republic would be entering elementary school. Like an inundation, it would spill over every channel, every ditch, every low-lying basin in the system.

Xicheng District now had over 45,000 students. In three years, it would increase by 10,000 annually, reaching 70,000 by 1990. Schools had already borrowed classrooms and implemented dual shifts. For most, there was neither funding nor land for expansion.

Xuanwu District had 900 elementary classes; by 1990, it would exceed 1,400. “We are facing this population surge completely unprepared,” education bureau staff admitted. “We lack buildings, we lack teachers—how can we possibly run schools well?”

Experts identified population pressure on education as China’s foremost future educational crisis.

Meanwhile, parents calculating their “little emperor’s” bright future were like trees and stones on a riverbank moments before a flood—utterly unaware of the disaster approaching. For generations, Chinese families have held an almost devout faith in the sacred power of schooling and the authority of teachers. They believe their children must be sent in, must succeed; they place all their future hopes on this single bet, ignoring every warning.

That, I believe, is where the true tragedy lies.

Warning Voices Amid Numbness

Every July and August, as anxious crowds shuttle between universities, middle schools, and elementary schools, another kind of information—crucial to their future—passes almost unnoticed. It is a faint voice, easily drowned out by the annual frenzy of school admissions.

On August 14, 1986, Guangming Daily reported: “This year’s admissions at teacher-training colleges are more difficult than in previous years… It is increasingly common for outstanding Beijing high-school graduates to avoid applying to teacher-training colleges or choosing teaching careers.”

Less than a month later, on September 9, China Youth Daily ran an investigative report titled “Why Do Teacher-Training Colleges Remain Deserted?”: “‘Please speak up for us—recruitment at teacher-training colleges is simply too bleak. If this continues, the future of education will be unimaginable!’ On the eve of Teachers’ Day, staff members at Beijing Normal College, a major teacher-training institution, made this plea to reporters.”

While the gates of elementary and secondary schools were bursting with students seeking admission, the teacher-training colleges—the institutions responsible for producing teachers—stood empty and desolate. Between this heat and cold, this prosperity and decline, a disturbing logic emerged: the very people who most hoped their children would receive a good education looked down on education as a profession.

Behind this logic lay a dangerous cycle. Education, as a social institution, was beginning to generate forces that worked against it—forces that turned inward and slowly choked the system itself. The result was a paradox: the more society relied on education to produce talent, the more depleted and feeble education became. And if this continued, what hope would remain for the parents who longed so desperately for their children to rise like dragons?

China today suffers from many such vicious cycles—stricter divorce laws leading to more divorces, more housing construction resulting in less living space—until one no longer knows where stability can be found. Yet I believe that the dysfunction of social mechanisms always has intelligible origins. These cycles are, in the end, the law’s revenge on humanity. When absurd logic openly governs everyday life, it is usually the symptom of a deeper systemic absurdity—and perhaps a paradox at the very heart of truth itself.

And nowhere was this paradox more painfully evident than in the lives of those closest to education itself. His name was Tian Chang. Both of his parents were teachers. By the time he graduated from high school, he had already formed, with a prematurely hardened heart, an unwavering resolve: “I will never work in education.”

He understood the social status of middle-school teachers all too well. Sixteen years of witnessing his parents’ hardships had made him write, without hesitation, in the “Willing to accept assigned placement” section of his college-entrance-exam application: “Accept all colleges except teacher-training colleges.”

He fled from his parents’ profession as though fleeing the plague. For a people whose traditions long expected sons to follow in their fathers’ footsteps, this might have seemed rebellious. Yet no one commanded more respect in his eyes than his father.

Every night, in their twelve-square-meter room, his father—afraid of disturbing his sons’ homework—would crouch in a corner wearing headphones, nearly pressed against the television screen. Only after the boys finished their assignments would he use the dining table to grade papers. Lying on folding cots, the brothers watched their father’s hunched back with an indescribable bitterness.

This man—once a top student at Shanghai Fuxing Middle School, later a geology and geography major at Peking University, an intellectual who had published multiple translations and essays—did not even have a desk to call his own. For a middle-school student in the 1980s, such irony was impossible to comprehend.

His father’s story was a piece of history that Tian Chang simply could not grasp: a geology graduate assigned to teach at an agricultural school in Tongzhou; then, after that school was shut down, transferred to a capped middle school in Shunyi, where he led students in deep plowing, summer harvests, autumn sowing, and large-scale biogas projects. His major was never used, yet he taught mathematics, physics, chemistry, English, Russian—whatever the school required. Later, the boy’s mother graduated from Beijing Kindergarten Teachers College and followed him to Shunyi. Only after twenty-five years did the family finally return to the city—only to be allocated a single twelve-square-meter room.

The two brothers grew up in those cramped quarters, sharing a dining table by day and unfolding beds each night. When they both turned thirteen, the family finally met the criteria for a housing allocation: under the regulations, middle-school teachers with per-capita living space under 3.5 square meters, children over thirteen, and both spouses working in education were eligible. But at that very moment, their mother died of cancer. Three people were left in the room—and their per-capita space rose above 3.5 square meters again.

He could not change his parents’ fate. But when it came time to choose his own, he refused to inherit it. Alongside the intellectual wealth his father had given him, he had also inherited a quieter, more tragic legacy: he could not bring himself to walk the same path.

When exam results came out, teachers advised him: “With your scores, the teacher-training classes at Tsinghua or the normal colleges would be perfect; otherwise, it’s technical colleges.” He shook his head and chose, without hesitation, the Department of Industrial and Civil Architecture at Beijing Construction Engineering College.

It was a two-year commuter technical college related to building houses. Can we blame his choice?

I spoke with a man named Luo. He had taught in middle schools until retiring at seventy. Now, in a quiet corner, I sat with this weathered elder in his eighties, listening as he spoke in a voice that seemed to come from a great distance.

“Nowadays no one wants to teach—and people are puzzled,” he said. “But the reasons are perfectly clear. People need hope: hope that the country is doing well, that the times are good, that their families can live decently, learn a proper skill, and do respectable work. With that hope, people have spirit and energy.

“I was born in 1912. My father spent his whole life as a minor clerk, earning twenty-one silver dollars a month—and we lived comfortably enough. I went to private school and didn’t finish elementary school until I was nineteen. When I grew older and wanted independence, I sat for the entrance exam to a middle teacher-training school—room and board were included. After graduation, I became an elementary-school teacher with a monthly salary of forty-five yuan. Raises were rare—forty-five yuan was essentially a lifetime salary. But look at the comparison: police earned eight yuan; government clerks earned somewhere in the twenties; even section chiefs made less than elementary teachers. Middle-school teachers earned even more.”

He paused, then continued, “People say intellectuals back then were austere. It wasn’t that we looked down on anyone—we were expected to keep our conduct clean. We weren’t good at currying favor, nor did we wish to be. We lived with dignity, earning our keep through knowledge. Our clothes were plain, which people mistook for being removed from the world. But today, even if you wanted to live that way, you couldn’t.”

“After seven years of teaching elementary school, I was admitted to Peking University’s Agriculture Department. I kept teaching while studying to support myself. Going to university was simply a way to qualify for middle-school teaching positions. Becoming a teacher wasn’t something people fought for the way they do now. Getting into a teacher-training school was extremely competitive—over a thousand applicants, only ninety admitted. Every one of them was outstanding. Even if you wanted to be a teacher, you might never get the chance.

“I’ve lived a long life and seen much. After 1940, hardship came. During the Anti-Japanese War we survived on mixed flour, and my salary could barely feed one person. When times were difficult, teachers suffered.”

“After the founding of the People’s Republic, I came to this school and taught for another ten years, until I was simply too exhausted to go on. In the early years after liberation, morale was high, and teachers were treated no worse than in the 1930s. But after the 1957 Anti-Rightist Campaign, intellectuals were crushed. Then came the Cultural Revolution—teachers suffered more than anyone. Our status collapsed, and it has never truly recovered.

“When order was restored later on, it felt like a blessing in the midst of disaster. But in reality, teachers’ status rose only in name and fell in reality. Other professions improved rapidly; teachers improved slowly. Even now, it’s not clear whether elementary and middle-school teachers are considered intellectuals at all. Veteran middle-school teachers in the first or second grade earn just over a hundred yuan a month—less than hotel service staff. What can one say?”

“I hold to one principle: when the status of teachers sinks too low, the nation is in peril. If every other profession is more profitable than teaching, then who will teach? People see officials earning large incomes; they envy power—and that envy breeds chaos. Do not underestimate this trend: once such habits take root, they are exceedingly hard to uproot. A society may tolerate many crooked paths, but teachers cannot walk crookedly. Uprightness is essential—but can one withstand the pressure?

“In my day, society was corrupt, yet we could stay above it because our salaries allowed us that independence. Try living like that now. Carry a basket of vegetables through the market and you feel your dignity slipping away before you’ve even begun. Dressed like a poor scholar, how can anyone take you seriously? And when people no longer respect their teachers, society as a whole stops respecting education. Once that happens, everything turns upside down. Schools must beg for everything—beg for funds, beg for buildings, beg for supplies. Under such conditions, how can education possibly flourish?

“Mistreating teachers brings its own retribution. You cannot expect to attract talent that way. The famous middle schools of old Beijing—No. 1, Huiwen, Beiman—built their reputations on offering strong support and good treatment, which drew the best teachers. The principle is simple: two jobs require the same effort, one pays well and the other poorly. Where will people go? The harder path becomes the least chosen. Assigning teachers through simple registration, or handing them a big red flower in praise and then forgetting them—how can that ever work?

“People should not fear hardship—but neither can they endure hardship without end.”

It was reported that, because recruiting teachers had become increasingly difficult, Beijing introduced special measures this year—launching an early, separate admissions process for teacher-training programs. Under this system, students could apply to either the liberal-arts or science track. The entrance exams were moved up to May. Anyone admitted to a teacher-training college could no longer apply to other universities, but those who were not admitted were still allowed to take the national entrance exams in July.

On paper, it was a sensible policy—attractive to candidates and low-risk. At the very least, it could draw in high-school students who lacked confidence in their prospects for the national exams and lead them to apply to teacher-training colleges first. According to an April 19 report in Guangming Daily, the once-deserted Beijing Teacher-Training College suddenly grew lively, receiving more than ten thousand inquiries.

But today’s high-school students are far from naïve—their shrewdness can be quite troublesome. Admissions offices soon noticed irregular behavior: many applicants appeared eager on the surface, yet quietly planned to skip the final examinations, ensuring that they would not be admitted no matter how well they might have performed. In reality, they were using the early-admissions exams as practice runs—a chance to test themselves under real exam conditions, get used to the atmosphere, and warm up for the intense pressure of July.

Alas—every family has its own clever tactics. But as the saying goes, “Good wine needs no advertising.” If the teaching profession genuinely offered what it should, would students go to such lengths to avoid it? What pushes them away from this path is a question that demands our deepest reflection.

Deterred at First Sight

The dwindling pool of applicants to teacher-training colleges had already alarmed the authorities—but those who were already admitted worried them further. Graduates of normal colleges were expected to become elementary and middle-school teachers, yet this career path had come to be viewed with dread. Each year, normal-college students invented new methods to “escape” their teaching assignments—stories we will explore later. For now, let us examine how teaching’s former prestige has faded in the eyes of contemporary youth. Students at teacher-training colleges never hid this truth. One of their most admirable qualities was their frankness: they said exactly what they thought.

This spring, while conducting interviews in several middle schools, we happened to meet groups of students from teacher-training colleges completing their internships—some from Beijing Normal University, others from provincial teacher-training colleges. In frank, unguarded conversations, they spoke openly about the profession that awaited them. For their protection, all names are withheld.

Female Student A:

“I didn’t apply to any teacher-training colleges during the college entrance exams. When I received the admission notice, I cried. My parents—both university teachers—persuaded me, saying teaching suits women and that there would be chances to change jobs later. From them, I already knew how hard teachers’ lives are. Now that I’m standing in a classroom myself, forty-five minutes feels endless. Every classroom presentation requires countless rehearsals beforehand. And let’s not even mention how difficult it is to take sick leave—here during my internship, I saw teachers with doctor’s notes in their pockets still dragging themselves into class. This work is like a rubber net: the more you struggle, the deeper you sink, as if there’s a bottomless pit underneath. I try not to think about it. I cried once when I was admitted—I’ll probably cry even harder when I graduate.”

Male Student B:

“My grades were always good in middle school, but I did poorly on the college entrance exams. The principal suggested I repeat a year. Later, a teacher filled out the teacher-training college applications for me; my admission had nothing to do with my own choice. Now that we’re interning, everyone is anxious—afraid that if we show too much enthusiasm, we’ll be assigned to stay. But this internship has really opened our eyes to how exhausting teaching is. Forget fixed work hours—your mind is constantly on student discipline and lesson plans. You can’t relax: once you stand in front of a class, you’re supposed to be a role model. Anyone who actually cares about doing the job well ends up suffering—your energy gets completely drained. And after all that effort, nobody appreciates it.

“Many classmates say that if they hadn’t done this internship—if they hadn’t come to see what life in a middle school is really like—they might have muddled through their job assignments. But after seeing it firsthand, they feel there’s no future in it.”

Male Student C:

“Society remembers teachers only once a year—on Teachers’ Day. That day, teachers hear every sweet word imaginable, and then they’re forgotten again. Aside from the nice speeches, there are ‘special discounts’ for teachers, though I’ve heard most stores just use it to clear old stock. People have scales in their hearts—they know exactly how little teachers are valued.

“No wonder that one day, while I was reading in the materials room during my internship, I overheard a teacher ask another, ‘How could you let that student apply to a teacher-training college? His grades were pretty good, weren’t they?’ A middle-schooler even told me, ‘My brother doesn’t study well—he wants to apply to your school.’ Hearing things like that hurts, of course. But if we’re being honest, they’re simply telling the truth. It’s better to face reality than comfort ourselves with illusions.”

Female Student D:

“This year’s early-admissions program for teacher-training colleges feels like a fresh idea, but I don’t think it will help recruit the top students. If teacher-training colleges continue attracting only low-scoring applicants, this is what will happen: the more the profession declines, the more people look down on it; and the more people look down on it, the harder it becomes to recruit strong students—so the profession declines even further.

“Right now, we students from teacher-training colleges already feel a step lower than others. Some even say we rank below correspondence courses, night schools, and television universities. Teachers really are like candles—burning themselves to give light to others. But if a profession demands that level of sacrifice without offering any special support, who will choose it?

“I honestly don’t understand why the authorities still haven’t figured this out.”

Internship Supervising Teacher:

“I’m a graduate from the ’81 cohort of teacher-training colleges, so I understand these interns’ feelings deeply. During my own graduation internship, I experienced the same disillusionment. At the middle school where I was placed, I saw a female teacher—only in her forties, yet she looked well over sixty. Her deeply lined face seemed to tell me everything about this profession: a life quietly, invisibly consumed by endless trivial demands.

“I often think that for today’s youth, neither the hardship nor the poverty of teaching is the hardest thing to accept. What frightens them most is the lack of spiritual reward after years of silent, unseen sacrifice. Many students in teacher-training colleges are not afraid of teaching itself—they are afraid of the narrow, stagnant, suffocating environment of middle schools, where individuality and creativity have so little room to breathe. They long for a sense of accomplishment and recognition, yet the space for that accomplishment is painfully limited. Once disillusioned, they want to leave—but are unable to. And it is precisely this that terrifies those in this line of work.”

Today’s education system stands before these would-be inheritors. Are they selfish? Lacking political consciousness or moral character? Bereft of responsibility or the spirit of sacrifice? It is easy to pin such labels on them. But who, in truth, has the power to change them? And where would that power come from? From impassioned recruitment speeches during admissions season? From lofty appeals to duty?

We are bewildered as well. The Party’s calls, ideological mobilization, and political exhortation once worked wonders; they produced generations of devoted teachers—almost miraculously, against all odds. Why, then, have these methods lost their force today, yet are still treated as the only remedy?

At times, it is difficult to tell: is the era deceiving the people, or are the people still trying stubbornly to deceive the era?

II. Suddenly Turning Back—To the Place Where the Lights Had Dimmed

Why is teaching pursued with such devotion—so much so that it moves others? Is this devotion blind to the hardship involved? In the confined world of schools, with the constant pressures of student management and the modest treatment teachers receive—what, precisely, sustains a teacher’s sense of satisfaction? What brings contentment in such circumstances? Only Heaven knows.

And as the old saying goes—asked with equal parts doubt and concern—”Is the veteran still able to carry on?”

Does History Still Remember Him?

Will Zheng Huaijie still wait for that once-in-a-decade reunion? If such gatherings truly continued, he would surely shed tears—though no one could say whether they would be tears of gratitude or sorrow.

Perhaps only those reunions could still remind people of a history now nearly forgotten—the reunions held every ten years for the high-school graduates who had once volunteered to postpone university and stay behind as teachers.

Thirty years ago, at a farewell ceremony for graduating seniors, Beijing Education Bureau Chief Sun Guoliang addressed the students: “After liberation, many children of workers and peasants have finally entered school. But we don’t have enough teachers—your younger brothers and sisters have no one to teach them. The Party hopes you will stay and help us raise them. For those of you who have already been admitted to university, your admission will be put on hold for two years. During those two years, you will stay and teach. After the two years are over, you may go to university as originally planned. Agreed?” 

Across the city, 3,000 graduates responded. One-fifth—over 600—volunteered to stay, most of them already admitted to universities. Zheng Huaijie stayed as well. Without much thought, he slipped his admission notice from Beijing Steel Institute into a drawer, never imagining he was saying goodbye to it for life. Two years later, when universities urged the stay-behind students to enroll, he refused again. Three years later, after personally sending off a class of students to college, he still could not bring himself to leave. That same year, he joined the Party.

A decade later, at a banquet celebrating the tenth anniversary of the stay-behind teachers, Director Sun returned and promised future reunions every ten years. At that moment, Zheng felt that everything he had given had been repaid—though the word “dedication” was seldom used then. Strangely, in times when dedication was not praised, people dedicated themselves most willingly.

One should not assume that young people of the 1950s were “fools” unaware of the value of higher education. Zheng Huaijie’s father, Dr. Zheng Zuoxin—an American-trained ornithologist, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and one of the country’s most distinguished scientists—naturally expected his sons to pursue university studies. He and his wife, a Jinling Women’s University graduate, gave their children the best childhood and the finest primary education they could. They never imagined their beloved eldest son would spend his entire life cut off from university.

A renowned scholar’s eldest son voluntarily becoming an elementary-school teacher—ordinary then, unimaginable now. If Zheng Huaijie could choose again, what would he choose?

This is not a trivial question. Once you hear what happened to him, you will understand what absurdity truly means. He never lived to see the second ten-year reunion. What came instead were fifteen years of suffering.

In 1964, during the “Four Cleanups” campaign, he was expelled from the Party. The accusation was the same one that had branded him a “rightist” in 1957: he had once told his students that Westerners mainly ate meat, eggs, and milk—and his accusers added a second sentence on his behalf, claiming he said that Chinese lived on grass, stems, and seeds.

In this way he learned how powerful, cold, and ungrateful ignorance can be. He had given up university in order to fight ignorance; instead, ignorance destroyed him. Even after expulsion, he continued putting his Party dues aside in envelopes under his pillow.

Then came the Cultural Revolution, plunging him into an even deeper hell. In a single week, he endured sixty struggle sessions. The very “younger brothers and sisters” he had once stayed behind to teach now paraded him through the streets like livestock, whipping him with belts and forcing him to perform the “cow-demon, snake-spirit” dance. As he stumbled through the humiliation, he could not help wondering: Why did I stay behind so that you could go to university?

When the turmoil finally passed, he returned to his work with the same conviction: helping students reach university. As principal, he bore responsibility for entrance-exam results. He opened classrooms for teachers, students, and parents to observe; he demonstrated lessons himself; he experimented with new exam-preparation methods that gave first-year middle- and high-school students a strong start. He even scraped together funds to provide teachers with monthly bonuses, overtime pay, and bowls of soy milk with two fried dough sticks during early-morning reading sessions.

Then one day, someone abruptly challenged him: “Where is your diploma? Without a diploma, can you be considered an intellectual? How are you qualified to be a principal?” And so, at fifty-two, he had to begin pursuing technical-college certificates. The very thing he had sacrificed so readily in his youth now returned—rigid and unforgiving—to judge him. By rights, he should have long been a senior engineer or professor. Instead, he attended night school and correspondence courses alongside students young enough to be his children.

He still keeps that old admission notice—its paper now yellowed from neglect. The two traditional characters for “steel” printed on it are characters students raised entirely on simplified script would struggle to write today.

Dreams of Weather Boxes

She drifted in and out of sleep. Each time she opened her eyes, that small weather box—white, slender, impossibly graceful—seemed to float before her. Beneath her feet lay green grass; behind her, a wide blue sky; around her, red scarves fluttered like flames…

Old people dream more. And so half a century of memories came rushing back—scattered, overlapping fragments. The night sky over the North China Plain. Nestling against her mother’s knees while counting the stars. The years spent “running from the Japanese devils.” The chalked outline of China on the blackboard at Northwest United University, shaped like a rooster crowing at dawn. Oaths sworn beneath the sickle and hammer. The flames in the blast furnaces. The Party secretary shouting, “Students, come quickly—look at the Soviet artificial satellite!”

“Secretary, that’s not a satellite—it’s the weather bureau’s high-altitude detector.”

“So clever—an expert already! A proper university graduate!”

Then came the heat of the summer of 1957.

“Zhu Congying, your thinking resembles that of the rightists—your Party membership is cancelled.”

Later: “Comrade Zhu Congying, you were wronged. But since you were never formally given a rightist cap, there is nothing to correct.”

What were all these scenes? She shook her head, trying to drive them away. She wanted only the dreams of those wide, blinking, endlessly curious eyes. The small hands tugging at her clothes: “Teacher Zhu, I want to join the meteorology group.”

Her heart had melted then. In moments like that, it had felt as though her entire life had been worthwhile.

Now the weather box appeared before her with a rusty lock, its surface coated in dust. Twenty years ago, it was famous. Who in Beijing hadn’t heard of the weather station at No. 128 Middle School? Few knew the name Zhu Congying, but the Municipal Youth League had written model reports about her. Geography teachers from all four urban districts—and many suburban schools—had come to hear her lectures. Even the Children’s Art Theater sent actors to observe her classes; afterward, they staged the play Little Geese Fly Together. All of that had long been forgotten. Who, now, could understand what this weather box meant to a middle-aged woman who had given her life to a school?

Her eyes filled. She had begun building it right after losing her Party membership in 1957. She could summon continents and oceans onto the blackboard with ease, make up playful songs to help students memorize mountains, rivers, cities, and railways—yet meteorology still felt unbearably dry to her students.

Then inspiration came. She sought out Teacher Liu Jingui at the Municipal Youth Science and Technology Center, and together they founded the weather station at No. 128. 

The white weather box on the lawn captivated the children. Every day more than a hundred students followed her instruction, writing observation diaries; soon, they became weather forecasters for their families. One girl, Shen Rende—granddaughter of the renowned Shen Junru—served as station chief for a time and later went on to study meteorology at the Agricultural University.

From there, Zhu Congying began to build her golden dreams: if standardized weather stations could be set up across Beijing’s middle schools, and if students could collect long-term data for national research on the “urban heat island” effect, then both students and their geography teachers could make real scientific contributions…

But now, the meteorology group’s exhibits lay abandoned in a dusty corner of the school museum, looking like scattered, broken relics. She gathered them in her arms and carried them home, as if holding a stillborn child—fragments of a dream that had quietly collapsed. 

Makarenko's Female Disciple

“Classmates, our class is still a Second-Year Junior Middle class—not a First-Year class. So why see yourselves as repeaters? When you go home and your neighbors ask about school, there’s no reason to hang your heads down in shame. You simply struggled with a few subjects, and we’ll work together to strengthen them. There’s nothing shameful about that. Stand tall!” 

Liu Yunlian looked gently at the thirty-six students in front of her. They had been selected from six different classes, and now they stood there with their heads lowered. With thirty years of teaching under her belt, she knew how easily a single forced repetition—handled poorly—could shatter a child’s confidence. Her students were standing at the edge of a cliff: without guidance, they could slip and fall into despair; however, with the right support, they might rise to something extraordinary. That was why, the moment she took charge of this repeat class, her first decision was to rename it Second-Year Junior Middle Class No. 4.

But a new name was only a cushion for wounded pride. The real challenge lay elsewhere: she wanted to teach, but they no longer wanted to learn.

“Teacher Liu, I don’t want to study anymore.”

“Why not?”

“No reason. My parents agreed. Why should you still care?”

“What did they tell you?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Studying is useless now. Better to go make money! Even college graduates don’t earn as much as people doing business.”

Teachers today not only had to beg students to study—they had to beg parents to allow their children to study. Society was feverishly chasing profit, money came too easily, and what strength did a poorly paid teacher have to resist such tides?

But Liu Yunlian would not give up. She went to speak with the parents:

“You must not confuse his thinking. This child is bright—trust me with him, and I will help him succeed. If he isn’t home after seven p.m., he’ll definitely be at my place. Don’t worry—I’ll feed him dinner. But he must go on studying.”

After graduation, the boy was accepted into the highly sought-after Beijing Hotel Service School to study Western cuisine. His father was overjoyed, though Liu Yunlian felt regret—his true potential, she believed, had still not been fully realized.

The boys were restless; she had to coax, persuade, and cajole them daily. Wang Jian was the class troublemaker—his hyperactivity disorder meant he could barely sit still for ten minutes without medication. Liu Yunlian brought him home for an entire winter vacation to train him; by the new term, he could finally stay seated.

Student T had developmental disabilities. His classmates mocked him, his parents treated him as a burden, and he lost all confidence, drifting through each day. When he misbehaved, his parents sometimes stripped off his clothes and forced him to stand outside as punishment. Liu Yunlian was outraged. She rushed to their home and confronted them: “You’ll destroy this child!”

“Teacher Liu, do you really think he can be helped? I have only one hope—that he can graduate and earn a basic living. If you can manage that, I’ll kowtow to you!”

“I only ask that you stop beating him,” she said. “I will take responsibility for his future.”

By graduation, he had improved dramatically. Despite his disabilities, he was hired by a hospital as an accountant.

Three years later, during the district-wide standardized exams, this class earned an average score of 82—with a 100 percent pass rate—ranking first in the entire school. Most students were admitted to high schools or technical schools. If this wasn’t a miracle, what was?

Yet the miracle-maker’s body was breaking down: hypertension, coronary artery disease, lymphatic tuberculosis, retinal sclerosis. At home, a half-blind husband who needed to clutch onto her arm just to walk…

Thirty-six children had their destinies rewritten by the devotion of a single compassionate heart. But that transformation came at a cost: she poured out every last drop of herself to make it happen. It was an exchange, plain and unforgiving. And when it was over, that heart—once full—was left drained and trembling, worn down to a thin shadow of itself, almost entirely spent in the creation of the new lives it had carried forward.

The “Pushkin” Riding Tricycles

“Old Ox”—whether meant as praise or mockery—clung to him like a yoke. It was a name that pushed him forward like a whip even as it pretended to honor him. Leaders called him Old Ox. Students called him Old Ox. Everyone called him Old Ox. And he could only force a smile while something tightened silently inside his chest.

Was he really nothing more than an ox? Was his worth measured by how powerfully he could pedal a tricycle, rather than by the Russian vocabulary he once carried in his head? It was true that even as he pedaled down the highway, he could still recite long passages from Pushkin’s The Stationmaster.

For in reality, Russian-language teacher Sun Jingzhen did pedal a tricycle for more than ten years at Beijing No. 177 Middle School. While his colleagues walked toward their classrooms with lesson plans in hand, he pedaled out of the city instead—toward Tongzhou, toward Shijingshan—anywhere he might find the alloy silicon wafers, the “golden ladders,” needed for the school-run factory’s gold-extraction work.

Gold was extracted, yes. But he remained buried in dirt, unseen and unmourned. Few remembered that he had graduated in 1964 with excellent Russian. Most knew him only as Custodian Sun in the General Affairs Office, Purchaser Sun for the cafeteria, or simply “Old Ox” in the school factory. For over a decade he endured all this in silence. Whatever task he was given, he did—never once pausing to consider his own worth.

No one could have predicted that the first person to resent him would be his own wife. She had married him believing him to be “a cultured man”—so how had he become the school’s errand laborer? Her back problems worsened; when the pain struck, she writhed on the bed. But he could not take leave—he had to keep pedaling forward, both literally and metaphorically. He would come home burnt by sun and sweat and fall asleep the moment he touched the bed, sometimes forgetting even to bring her water for her medicine from pure fatigue. She left him in the end, leaving him their two children as she walked out.

Even oxen cry—crying because they plow endless fields without ever having the right to harvest.

More pitiful still, he could not let go of Pushkin and Chekhov. Every Sunday he wandered through bookstores looking for them. He continued to buy Russian teaching manuals, one after another, even original Russian textbooks at international book fairs. But the six thousand vocabulary words he had once mastered had dried up—like the sweat he had shed along the roads for ten long years.

He often lingered before the massive Russian dictionary in the bookstore—forty-some yuan. He touched it again and again, but never dared take it home. Two mouths still needed to eat.

He even went to talent-exchange centers. But the sign was unmistakable: “Elementary and middle-school teachers excluded.” Others explained it to him: regulations forbade transfers. Middle-school teachers above Level 5, and elementary teachers above Level 3, could not “shift out.”

His lips moved several times, trying to speak, but no words came. He could not bring himself to ask the one question that gnawed at him: did he count as a teacher at all? 

Rendezvous Under the Cross

He stood in the long line outside the Social Sciences Reading Room of the Beijing Library, waiting for a seat assignment. His worn, ill-fitting clothes could not fully conceal the scholar beneath them, though he looked strangely out of place among the stylish young people around him—so much so that the staff felt a quiet sympathy and decided to offer him special consideration. They asked to see his work ID, then froze in embarrassment.

“Sorry, old comrade, I mistook you... The regulations say only lecturers and above receive preferential treatment.”

Liu Yancheng answered with nothing but a strained, bitter smile. His own published writings sat on the library’s shelves, yet he did not qualify for a borrowing certificate. The posted notice made the rules unmistakably clear:

“Certificates may be issued to the following personnel: engineers, lecturers and above; municipal labor models; March 8th Red Flag Bearers…”

Middle-school teachers were not on the list.

How he wished he could strike a quiet bargain with some kind-hearted labor model or Red Flag Bearer—someone who had no interest in old, thread-bound books—who might lend him their “special status” for a time so he could read the classical works he loved.

But good fortune had never favored him. His family background—like a shadow he could never step out of—had marked him for discrimination both in the army and at the university. Only the scholarly air of his household sustained him, keeping alive his devotion to classical literature even as he worked as an ordinary middle-school teacher. Yet even that devotion had to be carefully guarded: only after completing every lesson flawlessly could he dare to “steal” a little time, slipping away for a quiet, secret meeting with the books that had shaped his life.

He could afford only one bowl of fried noodles a week; the other twenty-one meals were plain noodles. Every Sunday, and throughout every winter and summer break, he spent his days at his desk or in the Beijing Library. Meanwhile, his wife and children lived thousands of kilometers away. Often, as he left the library at dusk, he would walk from one telephone pole to the next, reading the “transfer notices” tacked to them, hoping that among the thousands there might be one—just one—that could help reunite his family.

When Liulichang received new copies of the Complete Tang Poetry, he nearly lost his mind with excitement and lined up before dawn. Only four sets were available—he fought his way to one and spent most of his month’s salary on it. But he could never hope to purchase the entirety of China’s classical canon, so he turned to copying by hand. From the million-character Thirteen Classics with Commentaries to the Selections of the Tang and Song Eight Masters, he transcribed hundreds of thousands of characters. He could not dash off polished essays with ease; instead, he relied on a foundation built slowly—word by word, stroke by stroke—to carry out textual collation, annotation, and commentary.

Often, three to five difficult sentences required months of quiet labor, and even then his name might appear only briefly in a book’s preface. For the Wenzi Commentary, he spent two full years verifying five hundred citations—sometimes, tracking down a single allusion meant pulling more than a hundred volumes from the shelves, especially if he was starting from nothing. Only through such painstaking work could a middle-school teacher’s name appear alongside those of professional scholars.

His collaborative volume Nanshe was typeset in 1964 but suppressed for sixteen years, finally published in 1980. He had never sought material reward—only the chance to give himself entirely to his work.

Then, one day, a student’s parent came to school unexpectedly.

“Teacher Liu… about the telephone pole…”

After eighteen long years of separation, his family was finally reunited.

Not long afterward, a formal letter arrived from the Chinese Department at Peking University:

“Comrade Liu Yancheng of your school was originally admitted in 1955 as a literature major in our department, with excellent academic performance and strong research ability. According to his qualifications, he should have been assigned to a higher-education or research institution. However, because of his family background—his father was suppressed at the time (now confirmed to have had no major issues and already rehabilitated)—and because he expressed views regarding the Anti-Rightist struggle and the Great Steel Production movement, he was judged to have ‘rightist tendencies.’ His assignment at that time was unjust…”

At last, the burden was lifted. But the vindication had come too late. His former army comrades were now generals and division commanders; his university classmates had become professors and associate professors. And he? He was still a middle-school teacher—and would remain one for the rest of his life.

All he could do was endure quietly until retirement. Only then, perhaps, would he finally be free.

History Mocked Sincerity: A District Official's Reflections on a Generation of “Martyrs”

I come from a background of teaching. I know this generation well. In the 1950s, some people were admitted to university but chose not to go; others deliberately refused to sit for the entrance exams, choosing instead to stay behind and teach. Later, another group was assigned to schools after graduating from university—every one of them the backbone of the system. During the Cultural Revolution, they were all attacked. Now their hair has turned white, and they remain poor.

Their past was a single, unbroken road of hardship—enduring humiliation, carrying heavy loads, giving more than they had. Even now, as society races toward material gain, they remain unchanged. China is extraordinarily fortunate that such a generation still works with whole-hearted devotion. But after them, people like this will disappear. History will no longer create them. Why? The question itself is agonizing. I ask it again and again, yet no answer ever comes. We turn the problem over countless times, only to end up where we began. That hopeless circling—thinking and rethinking without resolution—is the deepest pain of all.

Reality gives us its harshest warning. Our corps of elementary and middle-school teachers is unstable, aging, and without successors. Each year, our attempts to persuade high-school graduates to apply to teacher-training colleges grow weaker; those who are both capable and committed have become as rare as phoenix feathers or unicorn horns. How long can this vicious cycle continue?

No one wants to sacrifice anymore—but whom can we blame? The real issue lies in what happened to those who sacrificed before. Teaching is a sacred profession, and its sanctity once rested on the willingness to endure loss. But when society comes to resent those who bear that loss, the sanctity collapses.

Many teachers do not fear exhaustion or hardship. They do not envy the wealthy. But there is one thing from which they cannot escape: their love and devotion for their students. Outside the classroom, their own lives feel emptied out—what the old saying calls “the four elements returning to nothing.” Many have nothing left for their own children, no strength to keep playing the role of “teacher” once they return home. Yet no matter how depleted they feel, the moment they step onto the podium, everything else falls away, and they enter a heightened state of attention and care.

How many people truly understand this way of life?

When teachers are needed, everyone appears: the powerful, the wealthy, the polite, the flattering. But once their goals are achieved, they turn away without a backward glance. And when society forgets them, how could teachers not feel heartbroken? What, in the end, do they have left?

One incident has stayed with me for years. In Beijing, everyone knows that No. 8 Middle School has a gifted children’s program—its students often win Hua Luogeng Golden Cup awards and other honors. At one commendation ceremony, officials and experts from every level attended. Child prodigies sat in the center, parents and teachers to either side. Horns and drums played; speech after speech praised the children. But not a single word was said about the teachers.

I reacted almost involuntarily. When my turn came, I said, “I propose we applaud the teachers seated on the right, and also the elementary-school teachers who are not here today. They deserve our gratitude most of all. To forget them is heartless and ungracious.”

The applause that followed was louder than everything before it.

In sports, when athletes win gold medals at international competitions, the rewards now extend to their former schoolteachers—a wise practice. But in most fields, no such tradition exists. Many successful people simply forget the teachers who first opened the windows of the world for them. This forgetting—this quiet contempt—has consequences.

When sanctity is profaned, there is always a price to be paid. 

III. The Collapse of Teaching

The Living Space of Those Who “Engineer” Souls

One loyal heart, like a silkworm spinning silk to its last breath,

nurturing a garden of peaches and plums.

Two humble rooms, where candles burned to ash,

illuminating generations of new students.

—In Memory of the Nationally Distinguished Teacher Zhang Sigong, from the Teachers and Students of Beijing No. 8 Middle School

Praise? Dirge? Elegy? Or angry lament? Two small rooms—eighteen square meters in total—housing six people. So low you could touch the ceiling with your outstretched hand; so cold and damp they never saw sunlight, with water seeping up through the floor; so bare—drafty in winter, leaking in summer…

This was the living space of a Nationally Distinguished Teacher after forty years of service. He lived here for thirty-three winters and summers. His daily companions were noise and overcrowdedness; sweltering heat in summer, bone-deep cold in winter; and air thick with smoke. Slowly, the harsh environment destroyed his health. For years he suffered from emphysema, coughing violently in class. The older he grew, the sharper the torment became. Until the day he died, he never left that collapsing house.

He passed away four years ago, taken by lung cancer. People murmured, “A teacher like Zhang never knew a new home in his entire life—how can the living not feel ashamed?”

He was gone. What remained was an unbearable inequality.

That inequality stretched between two extremes. At one end was what he had given—an immense, radiant sum, measured in the countless students he had guided into the world. At the other end was what he received—a frail, wasted body, like the last wax clinging to a burned-out candle. Even now, people continue to lay increasingly ornate wreaths on the altar of this terrifying imbalance, wrapping it in new halos. Not even Zhang Sigong’s death dimmed that halo.

But can such a halo truly light the way for future generations?

One cannot help but worry.

And he was not alone.

In a southern metropolis, an experienced teacher of more than thirty years lived with eight family members in twenty-one square meters. Hospitalized with liver cancer, he mumbled “house… house…” repeatedly in his delirium. On his deathbed, his family lied and told him they had finally been allocated a “three-bedroom, one-living-room” apartment. Only then did he close his eyes in peace.

Space—how much does a human body truly need? If a person were nothing more than a broiler chicken or a packed sardine, then space could be reduced to a physical container, measured only by how tightly bodies can be stacked. But humans are not made of flesh alone. We have spirits, and the spirit requires space—far more than the body—simply to breathe. The environment shapes one’s temperament, just as food shapes the body. When there is no room for the spirit to stretch, the heart is the first thing to be crushed. And once the heart has suffocated, leaving only a body occupying a few square meters—what use is that life?

Teachers are called “engineers of the human soul.” Yet why is there no resting place for their own souls? Why is one person granted space—roomy, comfortable, dignified—while another is left cramped, shamed, and humiliated?

If society is so stingy with living space that a teacher’s spirit is pressed flat, how can it also expect those same crushed spirits to show breadth, generosity, and selfless devotion?

At the housing-allocation office of the Xicheng District Education Bureau’s Infrastructure Section, officials explained the situation to me:

“The state and the higher authorities do emphasize the need to solve the housing problems of elementary and middle-school teachers. But in reality, there are more monks than porridge. Our district is a cultural center—many schools, many teachers. We have more than 170 middle schools, elementary schools, and kindergartens, with 13,600 staff members. Among them, over 6,700 households face housing difficulties—2,500 live with less than three square meters per person.

“Last year, during the second round of allocations in the education system, we were able to solve only 200 households—new and old cases combined. The main problems are two: money and land. Education bureaus are not enterprises—we’re ‘clean-water’ offices with very shallow foundations. The state budget is limited; we receive whatever is allocated, nothing more.

“Land is an even more fatal constraint. More than 60% of new housing construction must go to families being relocated during redevelopment. There’s more land in the suburbs. If we built housing there, teachers would likely move. But the city can’t spare them. If a teacher leaves their post, there is no one to fill it. The school is left with a vacant, irreplaceable position.

“So we’re stuck: the places that could solve the housing problem won’t take teachers, and the places willing to take teachers can’t solve the problem. We’re suffocating them.”

When I left the office, I stood for a long time in the courtyard. This had once been the site of my own elementary school, though the place was unrecognizable now. During the Great Leap Forward, we attended dual-shift classes; our teachers had only four full years to teach us six years of lessons.

Here I learned about humanity’s ancient “Nest-Dwelling Clans.”

Here I first read “The Song of My Thatched Roof Torn by Autumn Winds.”

Here were the classrooms of Teacher Zhang, Teacher Fu, Teacher Lü.

And I found myself wondering: are their names now buried somewhere on that long list—among the 6,700 households struggling with housing distress?

Candles Burned to Ash: A Generation’s Backbone

I received this memorial portrait from your family and placed it on my desk. And so, under your gaze, I will tell people your story.

Teacher Ma Aiyuan, when I conducted interviews, the education bureau told me you had been hospitalized. They said you were one of several teachers who had collapsed in quick succession. I wanted very much to speak with you, but I arrived too late. Now, in this color photograph, you look toward me—smiling gently, still holding three pieces of chalk—yet life and death lie between us. You were only in your forties. Your last photograph, taken on the very first Teachers’ Day, still shone with energy. How could less than three years erase all of that?

I was told that a year ago you were struck by sudden, unbearable stomach pain. Doctors diagnosed chronic cholecystitis and superficial gastritis. You took the medicine they prescribed, but the pain would not subside—sharp, radiating into your back, so severe that you could barely straighten up. You taught two geometry classes, one at the main campus and one at the branch campus, a round trip of two or three kilometers. Every step, every stair, was an act of endurance.

You were not Jiang Zhuying or Luo Jianfu. You were too ordinary. All you wanted was to recover quickly. You begged the doctors again and again: “Could you check once more? The pain is very severe…”

“Pain can’t be helped. Everything checkable has already been checked,” they replied.

What else could you say? Their tone made it sound as if you were exaggerating on purpose—leaving you ashamed under the worried eyes of your principal and colleagues. During another geometry class, cold sweat drenched your shirt and tears streamed down your face. Your students cried with you: “Teacher Ma, please don’t teach anymore!” They brought you a chair so you could continue the lesson sitting down. But what could you do? Without any medical proof, you had no way to challenge the doctors’ diagnoses.

In other words, you had no way to prove you were truly ill.

Standing at the fourth-floor window, you even felt the impulse to jump. One moment, and the suffering would end. But you forced yourself to think more positively: hadn’t you just had a physical? Hundreds of teachers had crowded the hospitals and passed through the “screening” in a single day. The newspapers even reported it. Everyone felt reassured. Maybe the doctors were right—endure it, and it would pass.

You told yourself you had no right to die. Your two children were young. Your spouse worked at a key middle school. You could not abandon them. Yet when the pain jolted you awake at midnight, and you looked at your spouse’s face, you would whisper softly, almost apologetically: “If not for all of you…”

Your sister, a doctor, came. “Go get a CT scan,” she urged. She told you that CT could detect cancer, but it was expensive.

“CT? No good. No need,” the same cold voices said.

You could only pay out of pocket and go to your sister’s hospital for the scan. Two weeks later, the results came: late-stage liver cancer, already metastasized, inoperable. The scan became the messenger of your death sentence.

The principal came to see you. You struggled to sit up. “Look, I really am sick. Good—now that they’ve found the illness, it can be treated. When I recover, give me more classes.” At last, you allowed yourself to lie back with a clear conscience—never realizing that you were about to commence the last stretch of your life.

You said, “I’m really too tired. I’ve used up all the strength of a lifetime.” Of your twenty-five years of work, eighteen had been spent in rural suburban middle schools. Every week you longed to see your children, paying the price of four or five hours on rutted, jolting country roads just to return to the city. And once home, the double burden returned—you were a teacher and a mother, with no rest in either role. Years of rushing, chronic sleep deprivation, poor nutrition, unrelenting workloads…

Your spouse brought the concern of many colleagues to your bedside: seventy of his university classmates pooled 700 yuan; fellow teaching researchers contributed another 300. Was it not for the lack of these very few hundred yuan that you had once been turned away from the hospital’s doors? They came bearing all their shared hardship, their sympathy and grief, their anxious hope, and laid it gently beside you.

They saw themselves in you. They could not bear the thought of your leaving the world at forty-six. They feared you were being pushed toward the underworld far too early. They wanted—desperately—to pull you back.

But in the end, you went. And the wide-open gates seemed to wait for the next one.

Who would it be? The living trembled at the question. Some teachers were elderly. Others—like you—were still in their prime yet already worn down, chronically ill, and physically depleted. Among the more than 4,000 middle-school teachers in Xicheng District, 233 had already taken full medical retirement, 272 were half-retired due to illness, and 205 were still teaching while carrying medical conditions. In the latest physical examination at Exhibition Road Elementary School No. 1, forty-six of forty-nine teachers were found to have illnesses—including twenty-two with tumors.

The principal of No. 15 Middle School told me, “Of our one hundred teachers, sixty-five are ill—mostly middle-aged. Many have taught through sickness for years. When something happens, they collapse on the podium. Long-term illness becomes impossible to recover from.”

Researchers say the human lifespan could reach two hundred years. In 1986, Beijing’s average life expectancy reportedly exceeded seventy. Yet in the thick register of deceased teachers kept by the Xicheng District Education Bureau’s Personnel Section, I found that in 1985–1986, the district’s deceased teachers (including retirees) averaged just over fifty—and nearly half died before retirement.

You, Teacher Ma, did not die from an accident, nor from ordinary medical error. You died because the system itself failed you. Only through your death did I understand something most people never notice: in public hospitals, the medical forms assigned to teachers and enterprise workers are not equal—and teachers are denied the care they need.

For enterprise employees, doctors prescribed expensive treatments without hesitation, hoping for dramatic results. Enterprises generated profit for the state—helping people and helping the economy—so such expenditures were justified.

For institutional employees—like elementary and middle-school teachers—any prescription stamped with a school health-care seal could not exceed three yuan. Doctors’ hands were tied. The more conscientious they were, the more afraid they became of treating teachers at all, knowing they could not order the tests or medicines that were actually needed. And why was this so? Schools produced no profit; they produced knowledge. Students took that knowledge with them. Children were their “products,” but only half-finished ones. Society seemed unwilling to pay for half-finished products. Somewhere along the way, the balance broke. In the world of education, value had become painfully unequal.

Who could possibly call this difference fair?

Perhaps only deaths like yours reveal this injustice starkly enough for the world to finally see it.

He—a Nationally Distinguished Teacher in a Beijing elementary school, rare as phoenix feathers or unicorn horns, and a newly nominated district People’s Congress candidate—suddenly attacked his wife and daughter with a knife at dawn on April 22 of this year, then fell from a building to his death.

The tragedy spread quickly, retold everywhere. When the news reached us, we put down our pens and began to investigate. Through several informants who wished to remain unnamed, and through scattered, bewildering fragments, we gradually pieced together a picture of the crushing pressures tightening around this generation of teachers—candles burned down to ash.

Teacher Z, you have lain in the morgue for more than fifty days. News of your death hit like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky—shocking, impossible to accept. Someone as sharp, capable, and steady as you, at the height of your career with every door opening before you—how could you suddenly destroy yourself, and so violently?

Why did you do it?

Colleagues said you were someone who never admitted defeat. In your search for new ways to cultivate students’ abilities, you threw open your classroom doors, inviting anyone to observe, critique, or judge. You wanted to prove that elementary-school teachers could make lessons come alive without theatrics or gimmicks. Who else would dare such exposure? One misstep under that level of scrutiny could ruin a career.

Your audience grew—from district, to city, to nationwide. Soon your classroom overflowed, with people crowding the back wall, lining the windows, standing in the hallway just to listen. You opened your doors to the entire country. You lectured with ease, as though speaking in open wilderness. And you succeeded. Crowds flooded in, turning campus corridors into bustling marketplaces. People copied your lesson plans, recorded your classes, filmed you, asked you to mentor seventeen apprentices at once. You never turned anyone away—not even the honors bestowed by your superiors: Nationally Distinguished Teacher, municipal education union committee member, district People’s Congress candidate. You never claimed you were overwhelmed.

But fame and honor came with a double burden. Every award meant more work to live up to, and every new role added another layer of social obligations—people to accommodate, relationships to manage, superiors to keep satisfied. The reputation you built in the classroom needed constant tending outside it. On one side, people crowded in to learn from you; on the other, you faced a steady stream of requests you felt unable to turn down. You were fighting on both fronts at once. Eventually, the pressure became more than anyone could withstand.

Your colleagues could not say exactly when your mind first began to slip. They only remembered that, after the New Year, something in you had changed. Your wife recalled you waking from nightmares in a panic. You told her that your late grandmother and mother had come to visit you. Everyone laughed it off. Later, you said you saw human shadows standing on the balcony at night. No one understood these were warning signs.

Even in fear, you still had to open the classroom door each morning. Life and work did not pause for you. You must have begged, silently and desperately, for everything to stop—but nothing did.

You began having severe headaches. After a CT scan, doctors found small areas of bleeding behind your forehead. Alarmed, district and school leaders urged you to rest. But when winter break ended, you insisted on returning—missing even a few days of class made you feel as if you had committed a serious offense. Within a week, your condition deteriorated dramatically. Then you collapsed—suddenly, irreversibly.

No one dares describe your final, wretched state.

First, you began to suspect your wife of ten years—the partner who had shared all your joys and sorrows—of trying to poison you. You refused to touch anything she cooked, or even drink boiled water at home. Then your suspicion spread to your aunts, your sisters, your entire extended family. Finally, you added your principals and longtime colleagues to this imagined “murder plot.” I wanted to ask the psychiatrists: how does someone so honored, so accomplished, become so utterly convinced that everyone is out to harm him?

You began searching your home for listening devices. You scraped lime from the kettle, smoke stains from the walls, grass roots, flower petals—sealing them in bags as “evidence of poisoning.” You carried aluminum pots to school just to boil safe water, because you no longer trusted the tap at home. You grew gaunt and hollow; your hands trembled without pause. Those who understood whispered that your mind was breaking. Those who knew nothing about mental illness tried to “correct” you, lecturing you day after day. That sort of “treatment” only pushed you further into the abyss. From the beginning, no one around you recognized what kind of help you actually needed.

People could cultivate you, use you, promote you; they could enjoy the honors you earned and the pride of claiming to have “discovered” you.

But no one knew how to save you from the onset of madness.

And so, in madness, a true tragedy unfolded.

You left behind too much for others to analyze, summarize, debate, or reflect on. Camus once wrote that “conscious suicide acknowledges life is worthless.” But you were not conscious when you died—so how did you cross that distance from clarity to the final act? Perhaps no one can answer that now. Perhaps few even wish to try.

When you were alive, you could never make anyone understand your torment. In the end, you expressed it in the only way that forced the world to confront it.

Still, we want to say to you: rest in peace, Teacher Z.

This world has no right to blame you, though it will build no monuments and issue no formal eulogies.

But those who witnessed your suffering will remember you—and lay you to rest—within their own hearts.

He had believed since childhood that he was meant to teach. Yet at over fifty, after twenty-five years in the classroom, he finally walked away. He told me, with unmistakable pain, how deeply it felt like a failure of an entire life.

“Only after I left—and looked back—did it feel like waking from a long dream. The decision was painful, but everything I could no longer endure eventually hardened into resolve. What surprises me is this: after spending most of my life working, I reached this age and still couldn’t bear it anymore. Is my relationship with education truly over?

“When I was a child, I attended a private tutor’s school, reciting ‘Human nature at birth is good.’ Other children paid tuition. My family was poor—I caught birds and insects for the teachers, ran errands to the market, and earned my books that way. Back then I adored my teachers; I admired them more than anyone. I thought being a teacher was the most admirable calling in the world.”

“After the founding of the People’s Republic, I entered elementary school. By fourth grade we were required to serve as ‘little teachers,’ helping the younger students. I threw myself into it and felt a natural affinity for teaching. Why else would I have written for Counselor magazine in middle school? Why else attend a teacher-training university? But after actually performing the profession—twenty-five full years—I finally understood: perhaps I had no destiny with this profession after all.

“Teaching is too difficult. Whatever you expect from your students, you must first demand of yourself. I was never a stellar teacher, but I still held myself to the strictest standards. I never struck a student, never sent one on a private errand, never took advantage in even the smallest way. Every year I poured my entire heart into preparing my seniors for the university entrance exams. And what did it add up to? When students were admitted, parents praised their children’s intelligence; when they failed, they blamed the teachers’ poor instruction. You just have to swallow everything in silence.”

“In recent years, even students began looking down on teachers. Seeing their arrogance, I often couldn’t bear it. But what could I say? After graduation they could earn more than you, live better than you, be more ‘successful’ no matter what they chose to do. What’s so enviable about being a poorly paid teacher?

“Take my neighbor. She had missed her chance at an education and wanted to take self-study exams to earn a diploma. She asked for my help. I thought: we’re teachers—helping others learn is our duty. How could I refuse? I collected every book she needed, even showed her my lesson plans. Later her daughter took the high-school entrance exam, then her relatives took the college exam—again they all came to me. I helped with everything I had, afraid of delaying anyone’s future. In this era when ‘a diploma can decide a life,’ teachers fear failing others, as if we wish we could sit the exam in their place.

“And what did I get in return? After some small, inevitable conflict, she turned on me and said coldly, ‘You’re just a middle-school teacher. What’s so great about that?’

“She wasn’t wrong—we aren’t anything special. But we’re not spineless either. As if all the hardship and exhaustion we endure is somehow deserved, somehow unworthy of respect. That was something I couldn’t swallow. I wanted to prove that among teachers there are hidden dragons and crouching tigers—that if we chose another path, we could excel just as well.

“My childhood friends who practiced calligraphy with me all went on to become well known. I taught for twenty-five years and barely improved. Out of sheer frustration I returned to my old craft—and ended up winning calligraphy awards. Then people suddenly came to ‘discover’ me.

“In the end, I always think of Han Yu. In one of his Miscellaneous Sayings, he wrote that even the finest horses, if treated like common ones, will eventually become inferior to them; they simply cannot withstand that kind of treatment.”

People Leaping Over Dragon Gates a Second Time

What kind of generation followed the one that burned itself down to ash?

Among them were young people who lingered outside the heavy iron gates of the teaching profession, pacing back and forth before finally stepping inside a middle-school classroom. And once inside—confronted by layer upon layer of impossible problems—they quickly lost heart. Many immediately began plotting their escape, determined to slip back out through those same iron gates. If taking the university entrance exam had been their first leap over the dragon gate, now they were forced to grit their teeth and leap a second time.

Strange? Unbelievable? Entirely misguided? If you knew how they first entered the profession, you would see that it was all perfectly logical.

It began with assignment season at the teacher-training universities. Four years passed—not in the “cold-window” poverty of the old scholars, but in morning readings, evening recitations, spring plowing, autumn harvests, earnest talks, bold ideals, secret romances, private confessions. Yet as “distribution day” approached and job assignments drew near, tempers flared like rooster fights. Classmates who had shared four years suddenly turned against each other. What were they fighting for? What were they trying so desperately to avoid?

During interviews, I came across a piece written by an ’82 graduate of a normal university—a recollection titled “A Life-and-Death Struggle Over Graduation Assignments.” He claimed he wrote it only in jest. But let me quote him here:

“Those days still make my liver tremble when I think of them. Everyone’s eyes were red. Brothers who used to drink and smoke together suddenly stopped speaking; couples who had clung to each other for years broke up overnight; the most ‘revolutionary’ and self-restrained classmates ripped off their shirts and brawled; honest blockheads who could barely string three words together suddenly became crafty and sharp-tongued.

“The entire department—more than a hundred people—each had a scheme, and each scheme had a dozen sub-schemes. But underneath it all we shared the same thought: push someone else into middle-school teaching and escape the fate yourself.

“How many could really escape? In truth, there were only two ways to ‘cross the river by night’: sit for the graduate-school exams, or stay on at the university as staff. Graduate school was a narrow, twisting path—only a handful could squeeze through, and the rest could only watch their silhouettes disappear into the distance. Staying at the university became the first battlefield. After several rounds of jockeying and negotiation, the dozen who managed to secure positions were almost all Party members. The resentful majority left behind nicknamed them, not without sarcasm, the ‘assignment vanguard.’

“But the second battle was even bloodier. The big fish had escaped; now the shrimp were fighting for their lives. If you couldn’t secure the top posts, you clawed your way toward the next best—because any job in the city was a hundred times better than being sent to the countryside.

“That sly fellow Yan’r had laid his groundwork since freshman year. He claimed both parents were chronically ill and needed him at home, and for four years he bicycled across Beijing every single day. Not once did he sleep in the dormitory. When assignment season arrived, he naturally became the class’s model ‘hardship case,’ guaranteed a city placement.

“Qu’r and Hei Jingjin had shared an upper-lower bunk for four years, split meal tickets, and sworn they ‘shared liver and gall.’ Then came the blow: one of them would be assigned to the suburbs—an axe dropping straight between them. Hei Jingjin cursed, slammed the door, and stormed off. Qu’r stayed silent and quietly handed in documents: ‘I was raised by my grandmother. She was just in a traffic accident and needs care in the city.’ Hei Jingjin was stunned—then furious.

“After seeing Yan’r and Qu’r pull their moves, everyone regretted not having acted sooner. Overnight, fathers collapsed with critical illnesses, mothers were diagnosed with cancer, grandmothers fractured hips, grandfathers suddenly became half-paralyzed—one emergency after another! The old saying proved true: put on a long enough performance, and the stage props start to fall apart. Class advisers began locking their office doors, hiding from the endless procession of ‘relatives’ pleading their cases.”

“But there were even more dramatic episodes. Da Ju suddenly announced that her parents were divorcing—she and her brother each following one parent—instantly turning her into an ‘only child’ again. That squeezed out poor Fatty, who lost his city assignment and sobbed until daybreak.

“The girls whispered among themselves: Was the divorce real—or staged?”

“No one could tell what was real anymore. Truth and fabrication were hopelessly tangled together. And when a rumor spread that married students would receive priority for city assignments, the neighborhood registration office outside campus was instantly flooded—boys and girls dragging each other by the arm to get married on the spot.

“Our class’s only child, Wai Hou’r, seized the moment. He finally managed to win over Fake Xi Shi—our campus beauty—snatching her away from the Scholar she had loved for years. Indeed, the Scholar’s parents lived in the suburbs. What choice did she have?”

“A half-year of chaos went by. We learned more during that time than in four years of classes. And then we scattered like birds and beasts.”

According to surveys by the Xicheng District Education Bureau, of the more than 380 university graduates assigned to the district within four years of the exam reforms, 13 percent were dissatisfied with their jobs, and a full quarter left the education system altogether. Over five years, one-third of university graduates assigned to Xicheng walked away; in Dongcheng District, nearly one-quarter did the same. Their “second leap over the dragon gate” followed a familiar four-step pattern: first, working diligently while secretly preparing for graduate-school exams; if barred from taking them, then feigning illness and dragging their feet; if that failed, slipping into a joking, indifferent attitude toward classes; and finally, leaving without a word.

A colleague of ours, now a supplements editor at a specialist newspaper, left a Fengtai middle school without notice over a year ago. 

He sighed. “I got this job through open recruitment—fair and square. The others who passed the same exam were allowed to transfer to different workplaces. But because I was a middle-school teacher, my school refused to let me go. They simply blocked me. In the end, I had no choice but to walk out. I even waited until the end of the semester so I wouldn’t disrupt my students. Of the four university graduates assigned to this school with me, every single one has done the same. They all left—and were all officially ‘dismissed.’

“When I first arrived, I felt frustrated, but not hopeless. The students struggled academically—few had any real chance of getting into university. Teachers recycled the same lessons year after year. The teaching itself wasn’t hard; it was just stagnant. I taught Chinese, history, even foreign languages—anything they needed. But after two years, I felt like I was on an assembly line. Teach a chapter, pass it on, repeat. Nothing actually grew. When I imagined doing that for the rest of my life—it terrified me. I wanted out. But the school wouldn’t release me.

“When they finally dismissed me, I felt awful. But honestly, you only get about twenty good working years in life. Losing this job was worth it if it meant I could finally do what I love—journalism. Of course, I paid a price: my personnel file is still stuck at the local office.”

Those sent to rural schools had it even worse—and were usually the most desperate to escape. A friend of mine—one of the lucky ones—kept me updated on what happened to his classmates:

“Today I ran into Lao Cheng,” he told me. “He’s applied everywhere—China Youth Daily, Beijing Youth Daily, Central People’s Radio, Beijing Daily. Passed every test, every interview. But his school refuses to release him. He’s losing his mind.

“Wang Yi, however, had guts. He simply resigned. Came back to the city doing substitute teaching. When he couldn’t find that, he carried luggage at railway stations and used the money to travel. Recently he wanted to join a Yangtze River rafting team—but they thought he was a drifter and rejected him.

“Liu Hai and his wife were both assigned to schools in the suburbs. They fought constantly. One day he chased down a district secretary; the next day she cornered a principal. Their leaders finally couldn’t stand the harassment anymore—the wife was released first. As soon as she got out, Liu Hai pulled every string he could, spent a fortune, and eventually managed to return to the city as well.

“Li Wei was even more extreme. Other people forged medical certificates—dust allergies, chronic throat infections, knee problems. Not him. He went straight for confrontation. He stirred up so much conflict between school Party branches that, in the end, they practically begged him to leave. They were so afraid no one else would take him that they even wrote him glowing evaluations.

“The ones without connections—and without the courage to fight—were the tragic ones. They kept everything bottled up until something finally broke. Take Old Zhou. He’d been assigned to a middle school near a mining site. He’d always loved martial arts. One day, on a long-distance bus, a group of hooligans started causing trouble. He couldn’t bear it. In a flash of impulse, he pulled out a fruit knife and stabbed one of them to death. He was given a suspended death sentence and now teaches labor-reform prisoners out in Xinjiang.

“Others tried more roundabout ways to make their way back to Beijing—volunteering to ‘support the Northwest’ for two years, then using that as a route to transfer home. Our classmate Fang Ling went even further. Since she spoke Japanese, she befriended Japanese exchange students, hoping one might take her abroad. One young man agreed immediately—as conveniently as a pillow appearing when someone wants to sleep. But once he returned to Japan, he vanished without a word, leaving her alone to raise a mixed-race child.

“In the end, almost everyone who escaped ended up better off. Some became department heads or newspaper editors; some became managers who took frequent trips to Hong Kong; some became wealthy households; others wrote novels, practiced calligraphy, taught at universities, or went overseas. Back then, more than 170 of us graduated together. Count them now—only seventy or eighty are still teaching in middle schools.”

Hens That Don’t Lay “Golden Eggs” — and Their Hunger

On June 2, 1984, People’s Daily published an open letter titled “A Worrying Phenomenon,” written by Liu Yisheng, a teacher at Yidu No. 2 Middle School in Shandong. He wrote:

“In recent years, the hardest task has been persuading students to apply to agriculture, forestry, water-management, mining, or teacher-training colleges. To be honest, students’ choices function like a scale—measuring what society values, which professions earn respect. And that scale is extraordinarily sensitive and accurate… Teacher-training colleges now account for nearly half of all enrollment quotas, yet not a single student lists them as a first choice. How can this not alarm us? It shows that, in people’s minds, teachers’ status has not truly risen.”

The letter triggered an unexpectedly strong response. Within days—by September 4—China’s top leaders issued important directives. Three months later, Xinhua News Agency reported:

“Education Minister He Dongchang, in an interview with our reporters, expressed great satisfaction. He emphasized: ‘The Party Central Committee and the State Council have always cared deeply about teacher-related issues. Teaching will gradually become one of the most respected professions in society.’”

For the first time, the public learned of concrete measures drafted in the wake of the September 4 directives. Their main points were announced on the front page of People’s Daily, printed in large bold type:

Salaries: Beginning New Year’s Day, substantial raises for elementary and middle-school teachers.

Housing: Local governments, with state assistance, to improve teachers’ housing.

Status: A growing national trend toward respecting knowledge, talent, and teachers.

For China’s teachers, this was the most significant and hopeful news they had heard in decades—ever since intellectuals were labeled the “stinking ninth category” in 1957 and through all the hardship that followed. For nearly thirty years, they had been waiting for a moment like this.

Naturally, hope blossomed. But it soon dimmed. Teachers quickly realized that turning promises into reality was far harder than making announcements. State finances were tight; countless sectors urgently needed funds; and every policy decision required “neighboring comparisons”—anticipating who might object if teachers received more than they did. Everyone understood these constraints, even if no one said them aloud.

An education researcher at a leading teacher-training university—a woman who herself had given up a promising academic career in the 1950s to work in basic education—explained the dilemma with a faint, bitter smile:

“Right now, we can’t even say with certainty whether elementary- and middle-school teachers are recognized as intellectuals. In theory, everyone praises teachers. In practice, middle-school teachers without university degrees still aren’t regarded as scholars, and elementary-school teachers are even more contested. It wounds them deeply. Petitions to the National People’s Congress about this grow every year. Now that we’re drafting the national Teacher Law, we’re stuck on a fundamental question: How do we measure a teacher’s labor? Is it repetitive? Or is it complex and creative?”

She continued: “Teachers do teach the same textbook year after year. Over time, they risk being treated as craftsmen. But teaching has no fixed formula. The best curriculum is worthless without a skilled teacher. Everything depends on the teacher’s ability to turn material into real learning. A teacher’s labor becomes embedded in students’ abilities—often in ways that remain invisible for years. When those students later become workers, farmers, doctors, engineers, writers, scientists—creating enormous social value—the teacher’s contribution lies buried layers deep.”

Studies estimate that engineers and scientists ultimately use only a quarter of what they learned in school. But without teachers, even that quarter would not exist.

“Teachers can realize their value only through other people’s achievements,” she said. “So should society acknowledge the special nature of their work? We believe the answer is yes. Teachers need special policies—higher salary grades, additional stipends, dedicated evaluation systems, professional titles. nBut the moment you say this, other professions protest. Doctors ask, ‘Aren’t our lives special?’ Street sweepers say, ‘Don’t we work hard?’ Shop clerks say, ‘Don’t we contribute?’ Every job feels special to the people doing it. Everyone works hard. Everyone believes their contribution matters.”

And so, she concluded, society sacrifices teachers first to maintain “balance.” The result is predictable: “It crushes teachers’ enthusiasm. To keep schools running, administrators start chasing what everyone else chases—test scores with one hand, money with the other, sometimes even relying on parents’ connections for small advantages. It cheapens what should be the noblest work of all. And when teachers struggle to uphold their own professional ethics, that is a profound tragedy.”

Teachers captured this bitter truth in a single, cutting remark: “The homeroom-teacher allowance is eight yuan a month—only a few cents per student per day. Managing children is worth less than guarding bicycles. Honestly, I’d rather pay eight yuan myself than be the ‘king of children’s futures.’”

People often compare education to a mother hen—a metaphor borrowed from Japan. After World War II, even during its most desperate years, Japan never neglected elementary and middle-school education. The result was the so-called “golden-egg effect,” the foundation of its economic miracle. But a starving hen cannot lay golden eggs.

So what illness afflicts China’s mother hen? No one can diagnose it fully. But one fact is obvious: if teachers aren’t fed—materially or spiritually—then no eggs will appear. The debate over “underfunded education versus limited national finances” is complex, but even publicly available data suggest the mother hen should have been given more than a few grains of rice.

Years ago, a prominent scholar put it bluntly: “the imbalance between education and economic development over the past thirty years has created a vast debt. The poorer the country, the less it invests in education; the less it invests in education, the poorer it becomes. Only when the entire society commits to supporting education can this vicious cycle become a virtuous one.”

Deng Xiaoping captured this logic clearly, noting that China’s Four Modernizations—of agriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology—depend on science, and science depends on education. Yet this principle has never been fully absorbed. When national plans are drafted, economic projects always come first; education receives only whatever funds remain. And in times of crisis, the first public monies redirected are often those originally allocated to schools.

In reality, today’s education is tomorrow’s industry—yet national policy often moves in the opposite direction. Western observers noticed this long before China did. When World Bank delegations came to evaluate potential loan programs, they were stunned that an entire education system could function on such meager salaries. And yet, when Chinese officials submitted their list of proposed projects for funding, education did not appear anywhere on it.

“Why isn’t education included?” the delegation asked. “Human development is the foundation of everything else.”

Education was added to the proposals only afterward—but only because foreign economists insisted on it.

But the mother hen was far too hungry to wait patiently. Schools began “pecking for rice” in every direction—patching together whatever makeshift solutions might sustain them.

And, remarkably, results soon emerged.

Beijing No. 8 Middle School produced a brilliant cluster of prodigies: Yang Zhibin, who tracked Halley’s Comet; Xu Zhu, who independently translated the forty-thousand-character Thirty-Nine Steps; Ma Yue, who designed a full Olympic Village in twenty-three drawings; Cai Tiechun, winner of the 1986 Beijing first prize in the national Hua Luogeng math competition; Li Bing, who defended chemistry papers at a municipal association; Yan Jin, whose artwork won international Olympic awards; Li Wu, who took first prize in a 1986 computer competition.

Who could believe all these students came from the same school?

One reason for the school’s success was what Principal Tao Zuwei jokingly called his “God of Wealth”: a school-run factory that brought in 470,000 yuan a year. With that income, he could offer class-advisor stipends, breakfast allowances for teachers who supervised morning study, overtime pay, experiment and homework-grading subsidies, and support for dozens of student clubs and elective courses—logic, aesthetics, Japanese, advanced biology, classical poetry, and more.

Even with this lifeline, Tao still ran up against the hardest problem of all: housing. He and his deputies often visited overcrowded teachers’ homes themselves, handing over cash from the school’s earnings—never enough, but offered with genuine care. He even sacrificed half of the school’s playground so the education bureau could build temporary housing.

“We’re all just doing what we can within our limits,” Tao told us.

At Sanlihe Elementary School, Principal Xing Peiyin had once been forced to beg door-to-door for funds. With help from the Academy of Sciences, she built a profitable school factory as well. She used the income to buy imported medication for a teacher with cancer, to run a cafeteria serving full lunches, to purchase milk for retirees, and—most movingly—to take teachers on their first trips to see the ocean, the mountains, the sunrise.

“The Four Modernizations need teachers,” Professor Zhang told us passionately. “So what do teachers need? If we want society to respect teachers, we must give them real guarantees—not just slogans.”

Some schools managed, briefly, to rescue themselves. Beijing No. 12 Middle School used revenue from its factory to build modern laboratories, language labs, art studios, a library, and even an astronomy deck. Before 1978, it had been a struggling, bottom-tier school; within a few years, it ranked among the city’s best.

But school-run factories were never a universal solution. Education officials cautioned us:

“Schools are not enterprises. They cannot shoulder production and teaching at the same time. And besides—not every school can make money.”

They were right. A mother hen cannot survive forever by pecking for scraps.

Which brings us back to the question at the heart of it all: if education is the mother hen of national development, then how will we feed her?

Epilogue: When Will Revenge Come?

In 1957, when the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite, the United States was jolted into a nationwide reckoning. Shock quickly gave way to self-examination. Congressional committees—led by Harvard University president James Conant—began investigating the quality of American education. Their findings were unsettling: American middle-school students lagged behind their Soviet peers in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and foreign languages. One committee warned that if the problem were ignored, America’s success in the arms race would depend not on the number of intercontinental missiles it possessed, but on the number of qualified teachers and functioning science labs in its schools. The following year, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act, directing federal funds into sweeping reforms of science, math, and language education.

Japan drew its own lessons. In its 1962 education white paper, the Ministry of Education reported that between 1905 and 1960, the country had invested sixteen times more in the development of human capital than in material resources. That strategy allowed postwar Japan—with only about six billion dollars—to absorb and master over ten thousand foreign technologies, quickly surpassing Western Europe and even the United States in several industrial sectors. Yet rapid technological progress also created fierce competition for talent within Japan: industry lured away educators, and teachers began “flowing out” of the system. In response, the Diet passed the landmark Talent Security Law in 1979, legally requiring that salaries for elementary- and middle-school teachers exceed those of ordinary civil servants.

Across the world, the pattern repeats. National strength or weakness, military rise or decline, competitiveness in trade, leadership in science and technology—all ultimately trace back to a single root source: education. History has delivered its verdict.

Over nearly two centuries, rich countries have grown richer and poor countries poorer. In poor countries, deciding how to use precious and limited finances—whether to develop industry or education, whether to train a small group of elite talents or invest in literacy and general education—remains a difficult choice even today.

China bears burdens heavier than those of any other nation—above all, the pressure of its enormous population. That pressure carries a grave risk: the creation of an entire army of illiterate citizens whose disadvantages may echo across generations. Today, one in four people in the country is illiterate or semi-literate, while in the United States one in four citizens holds a university degree.

And this is only the starting point. New technological revolutions are sweeping across the globe, ruthlessly rendering whole groups of workers effectively illiterate again—unable to keep pace with the skills demanded by a rapidly changing world. While China is still struggling to overcome the historical ignorance it inherited, global education systems have already moved on to preparing young people for societies that do not yet exist. Humanity has never confronted a challenge quite like this.

History may seem to have forgotten us.

But the planet cannot.

“How can nations climbing toward the summits of knowledge and power fail to worry—even to suffer—over the vast regions of ignorance that still exist on this earth?” On this planet—this “crowded, dangerous spacecraft,” as some pessimistic Western writers have called it—what will China’s fate be in the coming decades or centuries? And whose anxiety will shape humanity’s future: our own, or the world’s?

We were once a great civilization because we were once a sacred one.

O ancient sanctity—can you carry us again?

(Originally published in Tianjin Literature, Issue 9, 1987.)

Dreams of a Strong Nation: Misunderstandings in Contemporary Chinese Sports

Zhao Yu

Abnormal Sports Fans

Yesterday I encountered a veteran soldier in his seventies. He was in poor health, suffering from multiple chronic diseases, yet he was abnormally enthusiastic about sports. Though he had never held any position in athletics, his emotions rose and fell with the fortunes of Chinese teams. Logically, someone so obsessed with sports should understand something about the games he watched. Otherwise, everything would be confusing. Yet when watching volleyball, he didn't know who Yuan Weimin was; beyond Lang Ping, he couldn't recognize any other players. When watching football, he had no idea what competitions were taking place. Whether it was the march to Spain, the march to Los Angeles, or the recent march to Seoul, he was completely ignorant. Names like Zeng Xuelin, Gao Fengwen, Nian Weisi, Rong Zhixing, Gu Guangming, and Jia Xiuquan meant nothing to him. Yet strangely, he often let match results seriously affect his mood for days. This aroused my curiosity: what kind of sports fan was this?

Deeper investigation revealed even more surprises. He never watched domestic matches—only games where China faced foreign teams. And even then, he watched them without sound. Not because age had dulled his hearing, but because he actively feared noise, feared the disturbance it brought.

So the matches played out silently on the TV screen while he lay back on the sofa, half-asleep, simply waiting for them to end.

At last, when his children or grandchildren said, “It’s over,” he would struggle up from the sofa and point at the television for someone to turn it off. 

Then he'd ask: “How was it?” Apparently, he didn't care about the process, only the result.

His children and grandchildren would report the score: “We won!”

“Oh, good, good, not bad,” he would mutter, his face lighting up as he shuffled toward his bedroom, ready for a peaceful sleep until dawn.

But sometimes, more often than not, the Chinese teams lost.

“How was it?” he would ask again, the same old words, unchanged.

His children and grandchildren would hesitate, beating around the bush: “Today's rain was too heavy, the field was flooded... the ball couldn't bounce properly, we... we weren't well adapted...”

The old man would immediately glare angrily, rudely interrupting: “Incompetents! Useless! They should all be replaced!” It was unclear who exactly he was referring to.

He cared only about the result—or more precisely, he needed good news: Chinese teams had to win, not lose. In his later years, this had become one of his main sources of emotional strength.

For a long time, I couldn’t understand it. What did sports have to do with a veteran who had spent his life fighting wars of resistance? In today’s peaceful world, sports are supposed to be cultural pursuits—enjoyable, playful, grounded in the noble and civilized values of peace. How, then, had they become an outlet for pent-up emotion?

Only later did I begin to understand him. As I traced the arc of modern Chinese history—marked by humiliation, suffering, and repeated national failure—and realized that modern sports entered China during this very era, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, things slowly fell into place. China’s encounter with world sports is barely a century old, and that encounter began in a time of sharp foreign humiliation and military defeat. From the outset, sports in China took shape under distorted conditions.

After the Opium Wars, a deep sense of national humiliation settled over China—an emotional pall that lasted for more than a century. A weakened population, a collective melancholy, and even the caricatured image of China abroad—small-footed women, pigtailed men like Ah Q—formed a heavy cloud over the country. In this climate, the public clung to victories in any external arena and had little patience for Chinese athletes’ defeats. The deeper the historical wounds, the more brittle the national psyche became. From the moment competitive athletics emerged in China, athletes were burdened with the weight of their compatriots’ unspoken hopes.

Under this intense nationalist pressure, modern Chinese sports began generating “Songs of Righteousness”—stories of moral strength and national dignity that resonated deeply with the public. Every victory sent a jolt through the hearts of hundreds of millions. Naturally, this emotional backdrop left a lasting imprint on the development of Chinese sports over the past century. In many ways, the nation’s passion for athletic triumph became a stand-in for its broader sense of crisis. For a people long suppressed and searching for release, winning on the open, level stage of international competition offered the most immediate comfort—and the most accessible form of collective catharsis.

That veteran’s emotions were a microcosm of these broader nationalist hopes. Within such a charged emotional climate, the development of modern Chinese sports has become uneven and contradictory. At times, it has grown distorted, its gains and harms tangled together. To love it and hate it, to mock it and defend it, often becomes impossible to separate.

Though I wouldn’t claim that his feelings represent the majority of Chinese sports fans, I am certain that many viewers focus solely on wins and losses, ignoring everything else. The problem also lies with officials who value only gold medals and victories, treating “raising the flag and playing the anthem” as the ultimate purpose of Chinese sport. When our athletes go abroad for international competitions, they carry a heavy nationalist burden, one that far exceeds the realm of athletics.

Splashing Cold Water

The French magazine L’Équipe released its 1986 rankings of global sporting strength, based on a comprehensive scoring system designed to reflect reality as closely as possible. The editors chose twenty representative sports, grouped them into four tiers according to worldwide popularity and influence, assigned each tier a coefficient, and then multiplied every country’s results by the corresponding weight before adding up the totals.

The top-tier sports were track and field, football, basketball, volleyball, and boxing. We earned no points in track and field, finished ninth in basketball and eighth in volleyball, and had nothing noteworthy to show in football or boxing. The second tier included swimming, tennis, cycling, table tennis, auto racing, and motorcycling. Among these, table tennis was the only event where we scored highly; we earned no points in the rest.

The third tier consisted of judo, handball, sailing, gymnastics, and weightlifting. Here, we placed fifth in weightlifting and earned a modest number of points in gymnastics. The fourth tier—rugby, skiing, ice hockey, fencing, and golf—brought us almost nothing. And traditional Chinese martial arts, of course, were not part of the evaluation.

Once the numbers were tallied, the United States came out on top with 280 points, followed by the Soviet Union with 270. Then came East Germany, Britain, West Germany, Yugoslavia, Spain, Italy, France, and Canada. Japan, Bulgaria, and South Korea all ranked ahead of us as well. We finished with just 78 points, placing twelfth overall.

Given the scoring method, there was little room for complaint.

Readers will no doubt point to our historic breakthrough at the 23rd Olympics, citing those fifteen gold medals as a counterargument. But I don’t believe those medals reflect our true standing. We earned them in a year when the Soviet Union and several major Eastern European sports powers did not participate—gold medals that were, in effect, considerably lighter. In that same year, while the Los Angeles Games were underway, the Soviets organized a large-scale international competition of their own: the “Friendship ’84” Games, which drew many strong countries and produced outstanding results. If you compare the performances of our Olympic champions with the results from Friendship ’84, you’ll get a far more realistic picture of where we actually stood.

Weightlifting:

We captured four gold medals in Los Angeles. Compare with the “Friendship '84” Games champion results at the same weight classes:

When compared this way, the gaps became clear. Had the “Friendship ’84” champions competed in Los Angeles, our four gold medals would have been difficult—perhaps impossible—to win.

Diving. The young Zhou Jihong won China’s gold with a score of 435.51. But the “Friendship ’84” champion scored 483.18—a staggering 47.67 points higher.

Shooting:

Xu Haifeng’s historic first shot opened a new chapter in China’s Olympic story, and together he and his teammates took home three gold medals in shooting. Yet when we placed their performances side by side with the results of the “Friendship ’84” champions in the same events, we found:

Thus, in weightlifting, diving, and shooting alone, eight of our Olympic gold medals would have slipped out of reach.

Gymnastics:

China won five gold medals in Los Angeles. But when compared against the “Friendship ’84” results, the contrast is striking:

You can see the pattern clearly: apart from Li Ning’s two gold medals, the other three were far from guaranteed. Looking at the overall totals, out of our fifteen gold medals in Los Angeles, we could confidently keep only Li Ning’s two, the women’s volleyball title, and Luan Jujie’s gold in women’s foil—a total of four. Even if we include Lou Yun’s vault, which tied the “Friendship ’84” result, that still brings us to only five.

Of course, knowledgeable readers will point to the subjective judging in diving and gymnastics—we can put that aside. What we can’t overlook is this: shortly after those Olympics, 53 percent of the medalists at the World Gymnastics Championships turned out to be athletes who hadn’t competed in Los Angeles. Similarly, not a single World Weightlifting Champion had been present at the Games. Statistics indicated that the Olympic field represented only about half of that year’s true world level. In other words, China’s fifteen gold medals were won in a competition where 56 percent of the world’s top athletes were absent. Meanwhile, the “Friendship ’84” Games surpassed the Los Angeles Olympics in 51 of the 93 comparable events, breaking 48 world records, whereas Los Angeles broke only 11.

And those were just the summer events.

As for the winter events held that same year—much to our regret, China did not win a single gold medal. And that is the full picture of the 23rd Olympics.

Of course, the pioneering significance of those fifteen gold medals was enormous. Here, I’m simply offering a broad assessment of our overall competitive strength. Let’s look at one metric commonly used abroad—but almost never applied in China—when evaluating Olympic performance: the ratio of gold medals to national population.

With fifteen gold medals and a population of one billion, China averaged one gold for every 67.68 million people. A population of nearly seventy million could form a medium-sized country on its own. By this measure, China ranked fourth from the bottom among the twenty-four nations that won gold in Los Angeles. Even within Asia, we trailed behind Japan and South Korea.

New Zealand, by contrast, won eight gold medals with a population only one-third the size of Shanghai’s. (This same small country’s football team had once kept China’s national squad, chosen from a pool of more than 100 million, from reaching the World Cup finals.)

Alas, over 67 million people for one gold medal!

In 1985, the year after those Olympics, the Chinese weightlifting team that had won four Olympic gold medals competed in Sweden at the 39th World Weightlifting Championships, winning only two silver and six bronze medals. This was still China's best performance since it began participating in World Weightlifting Championships.

Similarly, at the 23rd World Gymnastics Championships held shortly after those Olympics, the Soviet team won eleven of the seventeen gold medals.

Less blind fanaticism, more scientific thinking.

Some people believed our high jump program looked impressive. But was it really? In the 1960s, Ni Zhiqin stood alone against the world’s best. In the 1980s, Zhu Jianhua was once again a solitary figure. China has never managed to create a rising tide in track and field. Historically, only Zhu Jianhua consistently cleared 2.30 meters—and he did so in isolation. Altogether, only four Chinese athletes have ever surpassed 2.25 meters. In recent years, just one athlete under nineteen has cleared 2.18. By contrast, in 1984 the Soviet Union had eight athletes jump over 2.30 meters, twenty over 2.25, and sixty-three over 2.18—including six teenagers. Zhu Jianhua’s own results were inconsistent, and he left no successors. Beijing’s track team still relied on athletes who had first won medals at the 1975 National Games—more than a decade later, they were still the ones collecting prizes. New talent simply wasn’t emerging. Li Weinan held the national discus title for eleven years. Zhang Jianying remained among the top three in the women’s 100-meter hurdles as late as 1986. Successors were scarce. Many of Beijing’s current “first-line” athletes wouldn’t have met even past third-line standards.

And what about Go? Players of Nie Weiping’s caliber are far too few.

But comparing medal counts or the strength of professional teams was never the purpose of this essay. By reassessing our gold medals and the true level of our competitive sports, I only hope we can cool our tempers—so that together we can look beneath the solid sheet of ice and examine the currents moving underneath.

From Liu Changchun to China’s “Dragon”

A brief look at the modern history of Chinese sports inevitably invites a sigh. In the 1930s and ’40s, China took part in three major international competitions. The first was the 10th Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 1932. Two months before the Games, the Nationalist government had officially announced it would not participate, citing “insufficient preparation and overly hasty timing.” After the September 18th Incident, however, the puppet state of “Manchukuo” planned to send Liu Changchun and Yu Xiwei to the Los Angeles Olympics under its own flag in a bid for international recognition. The news provoked widespread outrage across China and sparked strong public demands for the Nationalist government to send official representatives.

On July 1, General Zhang Xueliang personally stepped in, funding Liu Changchun and a coach to travel to the Games. Yu Xiwei, meanwhile, was under Japanese surveillance in Dalian and was unable to escape.

At the opening ceremony, Liu Changchun, China’s first true pioneer on the world athletic stage, marched forward carrying the flag. Behind him were four people, three of whom had been hastily recruited in the United States. American newspapers ran headlines like “Liu Changchun: The Only Athlete Representing 400 Million People,” openly mocking the Chinese.

After the founding of the People’s Republic, when everything needed rebuilding and national strength was still weak, the country placed great importance on developing modern competitive sports as a national undertaking and established the State Sports Commission. This was completely understandable and heartening at the same time. From the 1950s onward, China’s sports elites lived up to expectations, staging stirring, unforgettable performances under a strong nationalist banner. Today, our athletes have won 262 world championships and 32 Olympic gold medals, achieving historic breakthroughs and ending the painful era when China had no Olympic medals at all.

Contemporary Chinese sports have always been naturally connected to the nation’s liberation, destiny, and future. In the early years of the Republic, in order to quickly wash away humiliation, heal the wounds of war, encourage citizens to exercise, rapidly raise national health levels, boost morale, and promote production, a state-led, nationwide approach to sports—aimed at rapid popularization—undoubtedly played a positive and effective role, and was also unavoidable. Just as eliminating illiteracy required organized effort, so did sports. In fact, these sports policies implemented at the founding of New China produced remarkable results and won public support. In a short time, the Chinese people achieved accomplishments that won worldwide admiration.

But thirty-eight years have passed. Circumstances have changed. What was once beneficial has become harmful today. Approaches that were once full of vitality have become rigid.

Some people believe Chinese sports already lead other sectors—that they are quite advanced.

In fact, Chinese sports lag behind in the great tide of reform.

On the surface, our current sports system is the so-called “dragon.” The dragon’s tail reaches all the way to kindergartens, where children are selected as potential athletes from the very start. These prospects then leave their desks and books, entering county youth amateur sports schools and provincial or municipal youth sports schools. After extremely high elimination rates, the remaining athletes move into provincial and municipal sports teams—the “body” of the dragon. Following further rounds of elimination, only the very best finally reach the “dragon’s head”: the national teams, where they receive long-term specialized training and compete on behalf of China until their athletic careers end. The career paths of today’s well-known athletes are almost all variations of this same, universal model.

Others enter provincial or even national teams directly at a very young age, growing up under strict, militarized training. Gymnastics star Wu Jiani, for example, joined the national team at ten and received intensive training there from the start. Some athletes enter the national teams through the People’s Liberation Army’s Bayi teams, such as basketball players Wu Xinshui and Zheng Haixia. The Bayi teams themselves follow essentially the same structure, or they recruit athletes from various regional “dragons” and continue their development once they join Bayi.

Sports officials in China like to call this system “ideology as strategy, organization as dragons, training as unified systems,” or the “three-tier” training and management model. The first tier is the national teams; the second consists of provincial teams, sports schools, and amateur sports schools; the third tier is made up of schools and grassroots teams. But the third tier lacks even the most basic training conditions and naturally cannot produce new talent. In practice, therefore, Chinese sports operate mainly as a “two-tier, one-dragon” system.

For a country of one billion people, this is a very closed structure. Its defining feature is that it is state-run. It took shape in the 1950s and ’60s, and after the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s, it became even more firmly entrenched in the 1980s.

Everything is for gold medals. Gold medals mean being “the best in the world”—apparently the ultimate purpose of such a system.

But this closed system buries many people with talent or interest, preventing them from ever entering the ranks of athletes. As a result, sports lose the broad popular foundation they should have, and many disciplines cannot form a proper pyramid of development. Instead, they take on the odd shape of an upside-down triangle. In this sense, Chinese sports resemble a hot-air balloon—floating high in the sky, but with nothing solid beneath it.

Take gymnastics. In July 1987, at the Beijing gymnastics selection meet (which was called a “selection,” in name only) there was almost nothing to select from. Only the municipal sports school and Dongcheng District entered athletes, and Dongcheng had only five or six contestants. From first through eighth place, every spot was taken by the municipal sports school, which had barely more than twenty athletes in total. This, in turn, became the Beijing team for the 6th National Games. Beijing’s gymnastics base is still so weak—what must the situation be like elsewhere?

From provincial teams up to national teams, the only option is to recruit children across the board from a very young age. The Bayi teams, naturally, have no alternative model; they simply copy the same methods. Eight- or nine-year-olds joining the system for gymnastics is not unusual. But after a few years, if they are judged not to have potential or the right physical traits—what is to be done with such young children? They are barely ten years old. Parents often request that their children retain their military status. This leads to bizarre situations—children wearing military uniforms while returning to elementary school.

Older children face their own difficulties when they retire. Sending them to middle school—parents find it unsuitable. Sending them to university—universities generally do not admit students directly from the military. Keeping them in the army—the army cannot endlessly expand its staffing. The only remaining path is job placement, but local authorities often do not want them. As a result, the embarrassing phenomenon of retired athletes becoming “unemployed soldiers” happens frequently—even the world champion Ma Yanghong was not spared.

Regarding gymnastics, while we raise flags and play anthems at Olympics, recruiting from the grassroots is truly difficult. The foundations are unstable.

Star Li Ning, answering reporters' questions from Sports Daily, inevitably revealed his worries.

Reporter: “What are your views on future directions of Chinese gymnastics development?”

Li Ning: “At the 23rd Olympics, China won five gymnastics gold medals, comprising one-third of the entire delegation's total. But now fewer people practice gymnastics in China, which is worrying. To make Chinese gymnastics perpetually prosperous, I hope more people care about gymnastics.”

Though Li Ning was cautious, his meaning was clear.

I couldn’t help worrying—without real reform of the sports system, how could more people ever come to care about gymnastics? And not just competitive gymnastics—even simple broadcast exercises or workplace stretch routines: how many places in China still pay attention to them, let alone practice them?

This is the inverted triangle we face: the number of national team athletes exceeds the number of provincial team athletes, and provincial team athletes outnumber those at the county or district level. The lower you go, the fewer there are.

Mother and Son

In Shenyang, a woman named Li Wen wrote an article titled “A Mother’s Heart.” The wife of a football coach, she found herself in deep conflict over her son’s choices about sports—and football in particular.

I’m not a football fan—even now I still don’t understand terms like “offside.” Yet most of my life has somehow become entangled with football. To be honest, I hate it.

What mother doesn’t place boundless hopes on her son? What mother doesn’t dream up a beautiful future during her child’s early years? When my son Yang Lei turned one, I picked up his studio photo and, seeing his spirited expression, wrote on the back: “My mighty general.” When he turned two, dressed in a tiny navy uniform with binoculars hanging from his chest, gazing into the distance, I wrote: “My future ocean captain.” When he turned three, hugging picture books and reading with delight, I wrote: “My future university student.”

But as Yang Lei entered adolescence, he fell hopelessly in love with football. I was deeply disappointed. I didn’t want my son to play football; I scolded him and even hit him. Yet, tears still on his face, he would grab the ball and run straight back to the field.

When Yang Lei started school, his grades were good. I poured my energy into guiding him toward becoming a university student, while he poured his heart into becoming a good football player. In theory, these two goals shouldn’t have conflicted. But in reality, academic study is often neglected in athletic training. As a result, athletes end up not only culturally limited but also—because cultural understanding is part of skill development—unable to improve their techniques quickly. The overall cultural level of today’s athletes is far too low; perhaps this is one of the key reasons our athletic achievements have struggled to progress.

Football today—whether in awareness, technical skill, or tactical thinking—has developed into a discipline that is both science and art. But if Chinese athletes generally lack cultural grounding, how can they truly understand their coaches’ intentions? It is fair to say that the low cultural levels of both coaches and players have seriously held back the development of Chinese football.

From what I saw at some amateur sports schools, I can say without hesitation that many of the children who play football there are poor students—naughty, restless, and easily distracted. Many of them enter sports schools not because they have good athletic qualities or outstanding conditions, but simply because they dislike studying, and their parents send them to sports schools in search of another path. In one football class, the average academic score was only 18.3 points. During their first away match, four boys sent letters home, only to have them returned—the addresses were written backwards. I often felt these children were not stupid by nature. They had plenty of physical and mental energy. With a good environment and atmosphere—and the right guidance—they might not have ended up so culturally impoverished.

With a deeply conflicted heart, I watched Yang Lei enter the youth amateur sports school. From then on, he practically lived on the football field, growing ever more distant from his studies… I watched the children file onto the pitch as if rain were falling in heavy blows, each drop striking painfully against my heart. Look at Chinese football—how many passionate people have abandoned their families, left their wives, sacrificed their health, their hair turning gray, and still football plays cruel jokes on them. Was the lesson of “5.19” not painful enough to last a lifetime? For generations, Chinese men have poured their youth and their blood into the green field—who among them has not retired with lifelong regret? Football—how much humiliation and suffering you have brought these men! And as mothers, how can we bear to watch our sons walk such thorn-covered paths?

Yang Lei didn't receive my understanding and support, and finally left his hometown of Shenyang with painful, attached feelings, running to the distant Jiangxi to continue football.

Yang Lei wrote: “Mother, don't you think people should have ambition and aspirations?” Reading my son's letter, I cried. My 25-year-old son still hasn't dated or built a comfortable nest for himself. What's he after? Shouldn't mothers understand where their sons' hearts lie?

But mothers’ hearts also need understanding… Mine was filled with both bitterness and sorrow. My foolish boy, you’re playing for a second-division team! How could Chinese football ever turn around depending on a second-division team like yours? And yet there he was—head down, giving everything he had, playing with the strength of a tiger, the endurance of an ox.

However, after the Sixth National Games, my son will retire. He began playing football at eleven and has played for fifteen full years. Those fifteen years were the golden years of his life—years in which he should have absorbed knowledge, broadened his mind, enriched his inner world. But because of poor arrangements and an imbalanced system, his education and personal growth were held back, leaving him with deep regrets.

A few well-known athletes are able to attend university after retirement and earn proper diplomas, but they are only a tiny minority. Countless ordinary athletes—those from second-division and third-division teams, and the regular provincial or municipal squads—all face placement problems once they retire. They are not stars—on the road to championships they are merely grains of sand, paving stones. They are neither sports “princes” nor “queens.” And behind every athlete stands a mother’s heart—how could we not worry about our sons’ present and future? The emotions of thousands of mothers—don’t they directly affect the morale of the athletes themselves?

I looked at my son and knew he carried troubles he could not even put into words. And yet, for these men who devote their youth to football, it seems they have never truly been cared for…

How great these mothers are! They have given so much to Chinese sports—and at such a high price.

The true value of Comrade Li Wen’s article lies in her concern for every Chinese athlete’s ultimate fate. Her worry is not that a socialist country would ever let retired athletes go hungry, but that—without time to acquire the cultural knowledge essential for life—they might spend the rest of their days merely scraping by. That is what is unbearable.

Why must the development of our sports rest on the anxious worries of countless mothers? Why should sports—activities meant to foster well-rounded human growth—end up producing human shortcomings? Why can’t our athletes also be people of broad learning and culture?

In developed countries, top athletes are almost always well-rounded individuals with independent careers. Sports only make them stronger and their lives more brilliant.

Our “one dragon” system may produce batches of gold-medal athletes, but it also leaves thousands of ordinary athletes missing the best years for acquiring cultural knowledge. From childhood through adolescence, most of them live completely shut-off lives, cut off from the real world. Once, when a chess team visited a factory, one of the players saw the workers laboring and exclaimed in surprise, “Ah, so this is how workers work!” He barely understood how most people in his own country lived. With such painfully limited social knowledge, how could he hope to find his proper place in society?

Retirement, elimination—what happens afterward? What can they do? What are they even capable of?

The extreme backwardness of sports in elementary and middle schools produces countless “half-formed people.” And the closed nature of the sports world—with its utter neglect of cultural learning—creates another kind of “half-formed people.” Those whose heads are stuffed full of knowledge have weak limbs; those with powerful, well-trained bodies have empty minds.

Continuing this way, how can the field of sports gain parents' trust and support? In surveys of 215 Beijing families including teachers, cadres, workers, reporters, service personnel, and even sports workers, 214 families were unwilling to let their children pursue sports! Only one family was willing to send their children to support sports. And this sole family's father—a man working at Beijing Railway Station—had only said casually: “Well, just this one son. If he really can't do anything else, we'll only let him play ball as a last resort.”

Some schools, in order to accommodate parents’ concerns, simply refuse to let their sports departments recruit students—students who might otherwise “drag down” the school’s college admission rates. Unless a child has reached the level of “rotten wood that can’t be carved,” as the saying goes, sports schools shouldn’t expect to recruit them. No parent wants their precious child to abandon the bright future promised by “academic excellence leading to success.” As a result, even in Beijing—where many of our national champions are trained—youth sports schools have to pay to run recruitment advertisements.

We cannot blame these parents one-sidedly. This social phenomenon—admiring Lang Ping and Li Ning, yet firmly opposing one’s own child becoming a Lang Ping or a Li Ning—is no accident. Unless we look honestly at the realities of Chinese sports and carry out major reforms, who can we hold responsible?

Retirees

A major flaw in China’s sports system lies in the fate of retired athletes. With weak cultural and educational foundations, many are unable to stand on their own in society. And because only a tiny fraction ever become stars, most athletes face serious difficulties the moment their athletic careers end.

Among the Shanxi women’s volleyball players who once competed in the national first division, I casually asked several former team members about their lives after retirement. Xiao Han, 1.76 meters tall, was now painting walls for the railway engineering bureau. Xu Ruiping, also 1.76 meters tall, was working as a server in a small hotel. These were the only options available to them at the time. And in today’s overcrowded job market, finding any work unit willing to take them in would be even more difficult.

It is precisely because parents have seen so many athletes end up like this that fewer and fewer are willing to let their children pursue sports. Each year in China, four to five thousand eliminated athletes wait for job assignments; some wait five or six years.

What is especially regrettable is that many of these athletes, when choosing their next step, would rather serve dishes, paint walls, or take on odd jobs than become sports teachers or continue grassroots sports work—simply because the social status of sports teachers is too low. Once they change careers, many even avoid mentioning that they once “made a living through sports.”

Chen Hongqi, now a cadre in the Taiyuan Municipal Communist Youth League, had been a swimmer who once held several provincial records. When I interviewed him, he shook his head repeatedly: “We retired long ago. Don’t make me re-open those sad memories. You’re a writer, teach us how to survive in this society instead.”

In the end, the problem of what happens to athletes after retirement and the problem of how athletes are recruited in the first place come from the same root. Both deserve serious consideration—not only from the sports world but from society as a whole.

Faced with this situation, many local sports departments have begun establishing colleges and technical programs to help retired athletes earn diplomas. Some places simply open new sports schools. This can ease anxiety about qualifications, but it also expands the already oversized “one dragon,” adds to the sports system’s burdens, and makes it even more closed. These are temporary fixes, not genuine reforms.

Now let us consider another phenomenon in retirement—one that only a tiny number of stars enjoy.

In the 1960s, it was already common for former table tennis players to become high-ranking or semi–high-ranking officials. By the 1980s, volleyball players and coaches were even more frequently taking leadership positions after retirement. During “cadre rejuvenation” reforms, many provincial sports committees promoted successful volleyball coaches—removing them from front-line coaching work—to serve as committee vice directors. In some sports schools, when promoting cadres, volleyball people naturally came first.

These outstanding sports elites brought great honor to the nation through their achievements. The public praised them, the state rewarded them, and now that national wealth has grown, giving them even more generous rewards would not be unreasonable. Some among them are indeed suitable for leadership roles in sports. But must all of them hold official titles?

A great athlete or coach does not automatically make a great leader. The work is completely different. Forcing retired athletes into leadership positions often creates enormous pressure for them and predictable difficulties for their departments. Of course, this problem is not unique to sports. China has long had a habit of promoting model workers, war heroes, and Mao-study activists into leadership roles without considering the consequences.

Thus we end up with retired athletes at two extremes.

And Chinese sports now face a serious crisis: a “generational discontinuity”—a break in experience, talent, and succession.

Who Carries Wisdom's Grace?

The famous star Kevin Keegan, captain of the England national football team, was also a popular singer. His recordings—songs like “Victory Belongs to You” and “Free Games”—captivated countless fans, and London Television even produced weekly solo programs for him. 

Denmark’s goalkeeper Niels Bohr was in fact a physicist; while calmly guarding his goal, he would watch the flow of play and scribble complex equations on the goalpost beside him, an extraordinary sight. 

And the Brazilian superstar Sócrates—this bearded figure—became a key player on the national team only after earning a medical doctorate in São Paulo. People called him the “Football Doctor.”

However, among the national players our billion-population great country selects for any events, we rarely seem to see such “intellectuals” carrying wisdom's grace. Imagine—if a nation could produce more people capable of both engaging in brave, tenacious sports and creating elegant cultural arts, inventing or operating precise scientific instruments for profound academic research, that would be a formidable nation, a great nation.

Let’s start with football.

Foreign newspapers once remarked bluntly: “The Chinese play football with emotion, not with reason.” And what is this “reason”? I believe it refers to a complete, mature football consciousness.

South Americans place football alongside painting, sculpture, and music—they regard it as an art. Europeans see modern football as a science, emphasizing intelligence, strategy, and rational thinking in training. Brazilians play with lightness, beauty, freedom, and calm. They have broad vision; they are clever, flexible, and quick, playing with appropriate rhythm and pace. Watching them is like walking into an art gallery—there is an aesthetic pleasure one experiences.

But we, with our weak grounding in modern football theory, inevitably fall behind technically, stuck at the primitive stage of “physical strength + technique” while neglecting “intelligence.” The most obvious consequence is our players’ dullness and sluggish reactions.

Without better intelligence, mental and spiritual qualities cannot improve either.

At the 14th World University Games, the Chinese men’s volleyball team faced Yugoslavia in the final. In terms of technical ability, our team was not inferior. During earlier visits to Yugoslavia, we had beaten them 3–0 and 3–1. Before the final, we even studied their matches twice. On paper, Yugoslavia was clearly not our equal.

Yet the unexpected happened. In the final, the Yugoslav team suddenly played with tremendous fire, rising to an exceptional level and becoming braver as the match progressed. The Chinese team, by contrast, exposed serious psychological weaknesses—poor mental preparation, weak adaptability—and ultimately lost three straight sets. We missed a golden opportunity to win a world championship.

Upon painful reflection, the Chinese men’s volleyball team summed up the defeat in two sentences: “Why did we lose a match we should have won? Because we had the technical strength to win championships, but not the spiritual strength to win championships.”

This assessment was sharp—and accurate.

Our closed “one-dragon” training system produces batches of “half-formed people,” making it extremely difficult to improve spiritual and intellectual qualities.

Take Zhu Jianhua as an example. In principle, his Olympic failure should not have been criticized—victory and defeat are both normal in sports. But the roots of his failure, combined with the subsequent string of losses, including clearing only 2.24 meters at the 6th National Games, deserve serious reflection. Listen to how Shen Wenbin, chairman of the Shanghai Sports Commission, explained it:

“Zhu Jianhua cannot compete without Coach Hu Hongfei. Whenever he competes, they must appear together—one in the stands, one on the field. After returning from the Olympics, Hu Hongfei explained two main problems. First, Zhu Jianhua’s dependency issue was never resolved. Previously, in Shanghai, even though regulations prohibited coaches from entering the arena, Hu Hongfei would always sit as close as possible to the high jump area. Whenever Zhu Jianhua jumped, the first thing he did was check whether Coach Hu was there. If he saw him, he felt at ease.

“But when he arrived in Los Angeles, everything changed. Although he had a long period of preparation—he went a full month earlier than the other athletes—whenever people asked how things were, he said everything was normal until the competition. But once the competition began, problems surfaced. Why? He couldn’t find Coach Hu Hongfei! At the Los Angeles stadium, Hu Hongfei couldn’t sit anywhere he liked, as he could back home. In a venue of eighty or ninety thousand spectators, with crowds shouting, no matter where Hu Hongfei sat, Zhu Jianhua couldn’t see him. This immediately created psychological pressure and left him feeling helpless.

“Second, when Zhu Jianhua encountered difficulties during the competition, he forgot his own strengths. All he could think about was struggling—struggling to live up to expectations, struggling because not winning meant failing in his responsibilities. But this constant struggle erased the qualities that made him strong. It’s said that almost all high jumpers who clear 2.10 meters have knee problems, yet Zhu Jianhua does not—what excellent physical conditions he has!”

Shen Wenbin is experienced; although he works in football, the logic of sport is universal—and his analysis is accurate.

Our “single seedling,” pampered for years, had become a hothouse flower. Zhu Jianhua’s three world-record performances were not achieved in the harsh atmosphere of international meets, but in domestic competitions that provided him with specially arranged favorable conditions. Who is responsible for that?

Soviet high-jump expert Orlov, interviewed by Chinese reporters in Nanjing, put it well: “Zhu Jianhua has such excellent physical conditions, yet he cannot improve—he has actually declined. I find this difficult to understand. It seems he suffers from a dependency problem.” He believed that athletes make breakthroughs not by relying on others, but by relying on themselves. Athletes with dependency issues, he argued, simply cannot reach the top. But what created this dependency in the first place?

And Zhu Jianhua is hardly an exception. Chinese athletes in many events exhibit similar symptoms. 

An insightful article in China Youth Daily, reviewing our athletes’ performance at the 2nd World Athletics Championships in 1987, stated bluntly: “Competitive sport requires athletes to possess psychological states that allow them to fight, to compete bravely, and to feel excitement upon stepping onto the field. But many Chinese athletes in this meet appeared physically weak even before competing—reflecting poor psychological training in daily life. Chinese athletes are like hothouse flowers. This often turns certain well-known athletes into famous but ineffective figures, accomplishing nothing in world competitions.”

The article captured what many people already felt. Our sports system can certainly produce short-term results, but if it continues unchanged, it cannot keep pace with the development of world sport. More seriously, this system not only cultivates athletes with dependency problems but also easily produces “deformed” athletes.

A typical example was Han Yuzhen, a main player on the Chinese women’s table tennis team.

Han Yuzhen, a girl from Harbin, entered the Harbin Youth Sports School to study table tennis in the spring of 1958 and was later selected for the national team. At the 26th World Table Tennis Championships, she paired with Li Furong to take the mixed-doubles silver medal; paired with Liang Lizhen, she won third place in women’s doubles. She herself placed eighth in women’s singles at just nineteen years old.

With her steady defense, fierce smashing, and tall build, Han Yuzhen quickly became a rising star in the international table tennis world. The International Table Tennis Federation ranked her as the No. 8 seed among all women players globally.

But beneath these achievements, seeds of misfortune were already embedded in her psychology.

In October 1962, the Chinese table tennis team visited Japan. At the end of the month, China and Japan held their first team competition in Nagoya. The Chinese women’s team—composed of Han Yuzhen, Liang Lizhen, and Wang Jian—defeated the Japanese women’s team, the reigning champions of the 26th World Championships. The news greatly encouraged those back home.

On November 1, the Chinese women’s team arrived in Tokyo. The second match against Japan was scheduled for November 2. On the morning of their arrival, Liang Lizhen—who shared a room with Han Yuzhen—ran in panic to Rong Gaotang’s room, reporting that Han Yuzhen had been stabbed.

Rong Gaotang and the other team leaders immediately rushed to the scene. They found Han Yuzhen lying face-down on the floor, distraught, claiming that someone had suddenly broken in, stabbed her hand with a knife, rifled through Liang Lizhen’s belongings, damaged Liang’s rackets, and then escaped out the window.

After the incident, the Japanese police conducted an investigation. Their conclusion: no evidence of an intruder. There was only a strong suspicion of self-inflicted injury. After repeated examination and analysis, our own side also found the “stabber” story to be unsupported. After much work, Han Yuzhen finally admitted her guilt. The truth came to light on foreign soil.

Han Yuzhen had “known how important this match was” and feared that if she lost, the leaders would not allow her to participate in the upcoming 27th World Championships—or, even if she went, she would no longer be favored. So she used a knife to injure herself in order to avoid the competition, fabricating a story of a mysterious attacker to withdraw from the match. Worried that competing teammates might play well and replace her, she also damaged the rackets of main players Wang Jian and Liang Lizhen.

She caused an ugly incident, one that harmed her country, her teammates, and herself, consequently bringing great embarrassment to China in Tokyo.

After the case was solved, Han Yuzhen was sent home early. Party membership was revoked, and she was sent to Beijing Nanyuan Farm for labor. Three to four months later, through help and education from senior leaders like He Long, Rong Gaotang, and Li Menghua, Han Yuzhen returned to the national team.

Han Yuzhen competed in the first New Emerging Forces Games, performing meritorious service to atone for her crimes.

After returning home for national table tennis competitions, Han Yuzhen overcame public opinion to achieve top results, gaining a great reputation again.

Han Yuzhen performed brilliantly in domestic competitions. But soon afterward, at an international table tennis invitational, when she faced Japan’s Fukatsu Naoko for the championship, her psychological fragility surfaced again. Once Fukatsu closed the score gap, Han Yuzhen’s will collapsed. Although she had led two sets to none, she eventually lost. After that, she never fully recovered and lost to Fukatsu again.

Fearing that more losses might cost her a spot at the 28th World Championships, she twice tried to avoid competing by fleeing matches and falsely claiming severe “appendicitis” pain. Both deceptions were unveiled in time.

The State Sports Commission immediately decided to send Han Yuzhen back to Heilongjiang and prohibited her from participating in future domestic or international competitions. It was a regrettable end for an athlete with such outstanding natural gifts: a strong physique, high sensitivity, and solid technique. However, she lacked the most precious quality of all, a resilient psychological state. She suffered from intense anxiety over winning and losing, and from extreme individualism.

But the story did not end there. After returning to Heilongjiang, Han Yuzhen was imprisoned in “cow sheds” during the Cultural Revolution. She endured harsh torture, humiliation, and beatings that left her covered in blood and injuries. She was not made of steel—how could she withstand such torment? Forced into false confessions under interrogation, she implicated both herself and others. She would run around crying, then laughing; sometimes barking like a dog, sometimes cursing herself as a traitor, a spy, a fake Party member. Without the courage to go on living, she tried to end her life—by jumping from towers, swallowing match heads, and stabbing sewing needles into the area around her heart.

In 1978, the provincial sports committee rehabilitated her and officially appointed her as a coach at a provincial sports school. One year later, in September 1979, while coaching, Han Yuzhen suddenly suffered intense abdominal pain—this time genuine. She broke out in cold sweat and fainted.

After three days of unsuccessful rescue efforts, the 37-year-old former national table tennis star died. The diagnosis was sudden liver necrosis. Even after her death, doctors found a sewing needle still lodged in the tissue around her heart—one of the needles she had stabbed into herself during the Cultural Revolution.

Han Yuzhen’s life held ideals and regrets, brilliance and darkness, scars and smiles, humiliation and wrongdoing, rationality and collapse—impossible to judge in any simple way.

And yet, I kept thinking about systemic problems, cultural quality problems, problems of spiritual character. Sport is an essential part of a person’s balanced and harmonious development. Its purpose is not just to cultivate animal-like physical superiority, but to shape a person’s inner world—spiritual life, aesthetic awareness, values, creativity, and ways of living. A lively, expansive human body formed through participation in sport is a kind of beauty, expressing both material and spiritual fullness at their highest point. If our purposes in sport—and the systems built to serve those purposes—stray from this beauty, then what are they?

Chinese Coaches at Middle Links

Coaches occupy the crucial middle link of Chinese sport—and what worries me most is that after interviewing many coaches across Chinese teams, I became even more concerned.

In China’s sports system, fewer than 10 percent of coaches have received higher education. Surveys of provincial and municipal sports teams show that 81.77 percent of their coaches come from retired athletes. Provincial sports school coaches are similar, with 76.61 percent drawn from former athletes. Among 119 coaches from 23 national teams, more than 80 percent had only junior-high or elementary-school education.

Compare this with the world’s sporting powers. Among the 49 coaches participating in the 1977 U.S. National Collegiate Athletic Championships, 100 percent had college-level or higher education. In the Soviet Union’s enormous sports system, 55 percent had completed higher education.

Even more troubling: in a nationwide cultural-knowledge examination taken by 3,200 amateur sports school track-and-field coaches, more than half failed, and ten provinces had average scores below 60. These coaches—most of them retired athletes—suffer from severe deficiencies in general education.

Students are supposed to surpass their teachers. Yet the worrying reality is that athletes trained by these coaches often fall short of even their teachers’ levels. Inbreeding has already become a widespread phenomenon in Chinese sports. Look at the frequent, revolving-door changes among Chinese football coaches, or observe the numerous coaches in our domestic first-division teams: nearly all first-division coaches are retired main players, and national-team coaches are retired internationals. There are virtually no exceptions.

Coaches should, of course, be familiar with tactics and have practical experience. But coaching is not judged by how well someone personally played. Across international sport, many world-class coaches were never big stars themselves. Pelé, for instance—although a legend of the game—was never invited to coach the Brazilian national team; unless he earned five coaching qualifications first, he could not even be considered. After retirement, Franz Beckenbauer—”the Kaiser”—lacked the required coaching diploma and could serve only as team manager, not as head coach, in West Germany. Coaches of major Italian clubs must complete five stages of examinations before they can take charge.

Stage One includes football theory, anatomy, biochemistry, biomechanics, physiology and hygiene, and psychology. Only after passing may candidates enter Stage Two, where they undertake more advanced study. At this stage, an expert panel evaluates whether they possess genuine coaching potential, and another group is eliminated. Those who remain progress to Stage Three, in which they must intern with world-class teams and demonstrate the ability to produce full training plans and detailed technical analyses of those teams.

After further eliminations, candidates proceed to Stage Four: they must attend a substantial number of report sessions, seminars, discussions, and round-table meetings with renowned coaches and reporters. Here, both their professional knowledge and their ability to articulate and defend their viewpoints are tested.

Finally comes Stage Five: comprehensive examinations and a thesis defense. Only after meeting all requirements do candidates become eligible for coaching appointments. Even then, they begin as assistants and advance to head-coach positions only later. Such rigorous training and elimination procedures filter out many “stars” with dazzling playing skills but without true coaching talent.

One particularly interesting case is that of the famous American swimming coach Sherman Chavoor, known for his extraordinary organizational abilities. Under his guidance, the U.S. men’s swim team won sixteen Olympic gold medals, producing waves of world champions who repeatedly broke world records. Yet this world-renowned coach—who held an important place in the history of swimming—could not swim himself.

Once, after his team won a major championship, the jubilant athletes celebrated by tossing him into the pool. To everyone’s shock, this top-tier coach swallowed mouthfuls of water and began sinking—he nearly drowned. His athletes had to leap in to rescue him. After that incident, whenever his team seemed poised for victory, he would quietly slip away to avoid being thrown into the water again.

What does Sherman Chavoor’s example show?

As for our own coaches—although many are dedicated and have earned impressive achievements—a considerable number act merely as “exercise leaders” or “demonstrators.” Some cannot even demonstrate new movements properly. A truly excellent coach should possess constant curiosity, creativity, and vitality—traits closer to those of an engineer or an artist. Sherman Chavoor did not rely on simple movement demonstrations, nor did he try to serve as a physical model for his athletes. His strength lay in science: a fully developed, distinctive training system grounded in multiple disciplines.

Consider, for example, a provincial women’s volleyball team regarded as fairly strong by domestic standards. One of its coaches had to plead with high-school–level players for help just to pass the cultural-knowledge exams required by his superiors. Many of our coaches rely almost entirely on the training diaries they kept as athletes, copying them year after year—like a cat imitating a tiger. Their method of planning amounts to little more than flipping through last year’s notebook, making a few vague adjustments for this year, and muddling through the next—practice a bit, tweak a bit, patch things together as they go.

Their mindset is: How could reading or studying improve performance? Training means training—if you don’t drill them, they won’t improve! My own master “trained” me this way!

Thus, generation after generation of national athletes are “trained” by coaches like these. They inherit fragments of their predecessors’ experience and imitate others’ successes, knowing the phenomena but not the principles. Much of their work is blind copying—forcing things, insisting stubbornly. If others use high-volume training, we exhaust ourselves too; if others use anaerobic methods, we try holding our breath. The result? Countless athletes develop problems, get injured, or retire without ever knowing why. And in the end, some coaches complain that the Chinese are simply “unsuitable” for athletics—an inferior race that cannot be trained. Is that really true?

Two years ago, we invited a West German coach to work in China. After thoroughly testing two ordinary Chinese track athletes, he analyzed their conditions, selected the optimal training programs, reasonably arranged their workload, and corrected technical errors our coaches had long overlooked. In only three months, one athlete broke the Asian record, and the other broke the national record.

If a coach only knows how to make athletes jump hurdles, squat with barbells, and repeat a handful of movements—without understanding basic exercise physiology, sports psychology, or sports nutrition—how can their athletes possibly achieve serious results?

In recent years, some coaches have attended one- or two-year college programs in an effort to improve the overall knowledge structure of the coaching corps. While this offers some compensation, the foundations are weak, the study lacks systematic rigor, and much of the training is purely formal. It cannot solve fundamental problems—it merely produces degree certificates.

I heard about one such “education” experience. Around 1984, China’s “diploma fever” became intense. To satisfy the wishes of coaches and some retired athletes, the State Sports Commission created special degree-completion programs at Tianjin Sports Institute so everyone could “go to college.” Many famous coaches enrolled. Considering their weak academic foundations, the entrance exam tested only three subjects—Chinese, mathematics, and politics—and the questions were not difficult.

Yet among dozens of applicants, not a single one scored above 60 points combined across all three subjects. The highest total score was 58. Some scored 30, others around 20, and a few even 7 or 8 points.

During the two-year program, some never attended classes at all. They continued living in Beijing and simply kept their names registered at Tianjin Sports Institute. But when the two years ended, everyone received a college diploma. The “diploma distribution center” had completed its mission.

And now, on paper, they all counted as college-educated.

This is understandable—Chinese major sports institutes and normal school physical education departments have never had coaching departments.

Since we cannot implement the kind of systematic coaching examinations used in countries with advanced sporting traditions, we have no scientific way to judge the quality of our coaches. And so we default to the most convenient method: nepotism. The chain reaction is predictable. Without strict evaluation standards, truly ambitious, capable, creative newcomers often fall out of favor. More and more talented young coaches, unrecognized and undervalued, become unable to shape their own destinies. They cannot escape the authority of those accustomed to giving orders, nor can they overturn poor leadership through their own efforts. As a result, a sports team may produce miracles under a brilliant coach—or suffer repeated disasters under generations of mediocre command.

I cannot imagine how teams lacking cultural knowledge and intellectual grounding can possibly realize the dream of becoming a major sporting power.

Ironically, Chinese football in the early years after liberation—the 1950s—actually had a higher level of education than it did thirty years later. Li Fenglou, Chen Chengda, and Su Yongshun were all genuine university graduates. Qian Yunqing was a respected physician. Nian Weisi was likewise a well-educated young intellectual. But as the cultural level of subsequent generations declined, our defeats became more and more baffling. Starting with the 1957 World Cup qualifiers, we first lost to Indonesia, then to Uruguay’s university students at the inaugural Games of the New Emerging Forces. After the 1980s, we suffered major losses to Singapore, New Zealand, and Thailand—and, finally, to Hong Kong. It has been thirty years of an extraordinarily tortuous and painful decline.

Our current sports system has lowered the standards for Chinese coaches.

Consider our football strategies and tactics: in the 1950s we studied Hungary’s WM formation; in the 1960s we switched to Brazil’s “4-2-4”; in the 1970s we turned to Holland’s total football; and by the 1980s, we were even more confused—sometimes copying Brazil’s attacking style, sometimes promoting Italy’s steady defense-and-counterattack, sometimes insisting that France’s “European Latin” approach was the true model. We have tried everything—tirelessly, earnestly—but we have never developed our own way of playing.

What, after all, are our national conditions? Our characteristics? Our strengths and distinctive skills? How do we build a solid, reliable path to victory?

A friend told me that two years ago he covered a high-level football match at the Kunming Haigeng Training Base: the Chinese team versus Videoton, a strong Hungarian side. After the Chinese team won 3–0, Videoton’s coach was astonished and asked one of our international players, “How did you manage to play so well?”

The player answered honestly: “Because we did not follow the coach’s instructions.”

What an astonishing—and revealing—reply.

Behind every style of play, behind every tactic and formation, stand complete systems of sports theory and football theory. And these are precisely what we lack.

I have always remembered the episode involving the Soviet weightlifting team’s change of head coach. Rigert was a legendary figure. The president of the International Weightlifting Federation, Sheikda, once praised him: “Wherever Rigert appears, new records appear.” Rigert competed across three weight classes, set 63 world records, won gold at the 1976 Olympics, and claimed nine European titles and six world championships.

Yet after he became head coach in 1984, the Soviets began noticing limitations in his methods. Despite having more than 400,000 registered weightlifters, the Soviet Union repeatedly lost to Bulgaria—a country with only 4,000 weightlifters. At the 1986 World Weightlifting Championships, Bulgaria won seven of ten gold medals, Romania took one, and the Soviet Union managed only two. The Soviet press put it bluntly: Rigert “did not use his brain” to explore new training methods. “Shouting ‘Hold on!’ is useless today.”

So the Soviets voted Rigert out. He had been a great athlete, but he was not a qualified coach. They replaced him with Medvedev—an expert. Medvedev had served as national head coach from 1970 to 1974, but after a disappointing performance during that period, he stepped down and devoted himself entirely to theory. At Moscow’s Central Sports Institute, he led the Weightlifting Research Office, publishing papers, writing books, and producing major works such as Multi-Year Training Plans. When he returned as head coach, he came back fully armed—with new research, refined methods, and a modern theoretical foundation.

Soviet newspapers commented: “The key was not the change of experts, but the change in thinking.” And indeed, by 1987—Medvedev’s second year—the Soviet team showed dramatic improvement. They closed the gap with Bulgaria and broke four world records, while Bulgaria broke only two.

This episode deeply impressed me. Rigert rewrote world records 63 times. If such an athlete existed in China—if he became a coach after retirement but failed to produce results—would we dare replace him?

Readers should note that most Chinese coaches at every level are deeply dedicated and hardworking. Whether county, municipal, provincial, or national, who among them does not pour in effort and sacrifice? They set aside family responsibilities, money, and personal ambitions; their spirit of devotion is undeniable. During my own athletic career, and later in interviews, I constantly encountered such people.

At Coach Wan’s home, he told me that the sharpest tensions in the sports world—and in society—converge on parents and coaches. When wave after wave of children sacrifice their studies yet fail to enter technical schools or provincial/professional teams, parents take turns confronting him, placing the responsibility for their children’s “lost futures” entirely on the coach. Coach Wan could only hide and weep.

People must understand: these children did not fail to become professionals solely because of their own performance. In many cases, certain leaders—eager for quick results—purchased ready-made athletes from other provinces, thereby taking up the roster spots and opportunities that should have gone to local children. But we cannot simply blame the leaders either: buying fully developed athletes is far cheaper than spending years cultivating young talent. Their budgets are limited too.

And so the cycle continues: parents are devastated, children discouraged, coaches attacked, and leaders anxious. Yet the people who bear the heaviest pressure—those standing at the very center of this storm—are still the coaches.

Coach Wan’s wife was also a track coach. She and her colleagues worked three shifts per day: morning practice, midday practice, and afternoon practice. They endured scorching summer sun and biting winter winds—day after day, year after year. Yet they received only fifty cents a day in subsidies—not even enough for the elderly women in their compound to play a modest round of mahjong. In earlier years, coaches received one set of clothing every one or two years; later, in some places, the cycle stretched to three years—by which time the garments had long been destroyed by wind and rain.

Yet, in order to please municipal cadres and secure funds, sports committee leaders were required to offer set after set of clothing—or call them “long-term loans.” Some leaders received two or three sets apiece! Could they wear them all? It didn't matter—wives could wear them in the kitchen, children could wear them to school, and they made great gifts for relatives. The hardships of Chinese coaches cannot be summarized in a few sentences.

Even professional-title evaluations are riddled with contradictions. Municipal coaches often don't have the opportunity to take teams to national competitions. However, the evaluation frameworks in some cities require direct participation in national-level competitions. Direct participation. If the athletes you trained later compete at the provincial level, that does not count. In football, for example, regulations require that you have trained at least seven main-position players at the provincial level. However, if every municipal coach must produce seven provincial starters just to qualify, then each province would need hundreds of starting players. Is that reasonable?

Meanwhile, many veteran coaches’ former students have become university lecturers, yet these coaches remain undervalued and unable to obtain their coaching titles, still leading teams on the playground.

People Distant from Science

Today's world has ended the era of relying solely on coaches for training. Now, coaches, doctors, researchers, and athletes work together to implement comprehensive, scientific training.

However, the state of sports research is disappointing, to say the least. Of the recently announced sports science and technology progress awards, only three won first prizes, and only one was related to athlete selection research. The other two were for beverages and terminal disease prevention and treatment. During the 1986 Seoul Asian Games, Chinese newspapers devoted much ink to gold medal publicity, mainly focusing on “raising flags and playing anthems.” However, we publicized very little about the simultaneous Asian Games scientific conference, which was barely known. At this conference, which covered twelve research disciplines, Korea presented 91 papers, Japan presented 62, and Taipei presented 19. What about us? Shamefully, the People's Republic of China presented only two.

Whenever we discuss sports success, we mention only “tenacious struggling,” “brave advancing,” “winning glory for our country”—spiritual motivations that render science “unnecessary.” This naturally relates to our long period of disrespecting knowledge and excluding science as a productive force; this is a macro-level error. 

For sports itself, the underlying issue is deeper. In the eyes of many, sports and science are very distant concepts. Chinese historical sports heroes—whether engaging in activities on land, water, or air, involving running, jumping, swimming, sliding, or throwing—are always attributed to sheer practice. So-called skills are believed to depend entirely on enduring hardship and years of unceasing dedication. This has perpetuated the belief that success in sports is simply about being tall and strong. The guiding principle remains: “Sweat more in peacetime, win more championships in competitions.” 

Compounding this issue is the pressure for immediate results. Sports research cannot directly or quickly produce gold medals; it requires a long-term focus. When the priority is always the current period and instant victory, the slower, necessary progress of sports science is overlooked, causing it to struggle in China for a long time.

Some coaches do not understand this; they seem to forget that standing on the shoulders of science would make them much more capable. Currently, training and research institutes across various sports committees exist as separate entities. Coaches find research institutes to be bothersome and obstructive. Conversely, research personnel fear offending coaches, which would make their future research more difficult. This friction was detailed through extensive complaints from a senior State Sports Commission researcher:

“Don't even get me started on the difficulties! Research work elsewhere is prestigious and well-regarded. If you help farmers eliminate pests or turn small dates into large ones, of course they would be grateful. But here, it's nothing but trouble! You want to run a urine test or collect some specific measurements—you'll face a coach's grim, dark expression, and you won't be allowed to touch the athletes. If you want to test dynamic performance, they claim you're messing up the training schedule. If you test static measurements, they say you're disrupting the athletes' rest. If researchers happen to discover that a coach's arrangements for training volume or intensity are actually harmful, you wouldn't dare suggest it directly.

“On top of that, the athletes themselves get annoyed, thinking you're just causing them trouble. As a result, a single research project gets dragged out indefinitely. And when you finally manage to complete it, you still have to thank the coaches profusely. Ha! As if they were doing you a favor by letting you do your job!

“It's the foreign coaches who are truly savvy. The high-level international coaches we invest in constantly seek out the research institutes. They actively rely on us, cultivating excellent, collaborative relationships with our teams. Take the German coach, for instance: every single day's training must reference the data from our institute. He simply won't work without it. Contrast this with our domestic coaches: we have to beg them to allow testing, and they treat the whole process as an enormous inconvenience. Yet, the foreign coaches actively bring their teams in—sometimes even worried that we might be careless! They point out that in their home countries, utilizing research units is costly; they see the benefit of our system, noting that under 'socialism' they get things done for free. So they visit us constantly. Meanwhile, you cannot even persuade our own coaches to show up.

“Ironically, it's not that our coaches deliberately shun science or lack the desire for results. They do want success! The underlying issue is their low academic background. Attending would be futile; they simply wouldn't grasp it. Even if we hand them the data, they would remain utterly confused—blind despite having their eyes open.

“Just mentioning research institutes makes my blood boil. When the gold medals return, look how ecstatic the leadership becomes. But when your research papers win international awards, who pays attention? Across every generation of leadership, all energy remains laser-focused on the training departments and the medal count. With this relentlessly shortsighted approach, trying to build a truly dominant sports power is going to be incredibly difficult!”

Talent Retention

Another major drawback of the current sports system, particularly the competition structure, is impossible to ignore.

While the necessity of sports talent exchange isn't denied in principle, any attempt to acquire an athlete from another team's jurisdiction is inevitably met with rejection. For example, following a domestic competition, coaches from the PLA (People's Liberation Army) team sought to recruit athletes who had finished outside the top ten in their events from other provincial and municipal teams—a proposal that was rejected across the board. Even transferring those outside the top ten was forbidden, based on the following fear: “What if you train them well and they beat us later?”

This territoriality was vividly demonstrated in October 1985 when the American track coach Dennis, coaching in China, witnessed something completely baffling at the Zhengzhou Youth Games. He noticed that the young athletes who won the gold medals in track events generally lacked the attributes for long-term improvement. Yet, the athletes who displayed clear, outstanding promise were withheld by their provincial and regional coaches. This frustrating encounter wasn't his first; he had experienced this same territorialism soon after his arrival in China in 1984.

This strong localism is the primary source of Dennis's confusion. Consequently, the development system is undermined, and China's sports reserve forces suffer significantly from talent hoarding.

This formal document, issued by a certain provincial sports committee in March 1986, strictly prohibits the unauthorized transfer of sports personnel. The decree was prompted by reports that athletes from two cities within the province had been “privately recruited” by institutions like the Beijing Aviation Institute, the Beijing Sports Institute Competition Sports School, and the Bayi Team (PLA). To combat this “outflow,” the following stringent regulations were established:

All external provinces, municipalities, districts, the PLA, and national industrial sports associations wishing to recruit athletes from our province's various sports schools must possess a formal introduction letter from their home province’s sports committee (or an equivalent authority). This letter must be officially approved and sealed by our provincial sports committee. Recruitment is restricted to designated prefectures, cities, or counties. Local authorities are authorized to refuse any recruiters who arrive without this complete documentation.

All higher education institutions recruiting athletes from our sports schools must first obtain approval from the local sports committee and subsequently report to the provincial sports committee for final authorization. They must strictly adhere to formal enrollment procedures. Randomly recruiting athletes without official recommendations from local sports committees and approval from the provincial enrollment office is absolutely prohibited.

(Omitted)

For those failing to follow the established procedures and attempting to recruit athletes arbitrarily, sports committees at all levels must intervene through relevant local government departments and immediately report the incident to the provincial sports committee. If the non-compliant units ignore these warnings, the provincial sports committees will directly engage with the appropriate authorities in other regions, including the State Education Commission and the General Political Department; when necessary, they will request the State Sports Commission to issue a nationwide notification. Furthermore, any individual within the sports committees found to be conducting private transactions or deliberately concealing unauthorized recruitment will be thoroughly investigated, and relevant leadership responsibility will be firmly pursued.

The decree also mandates that local authorities must diligently recover lost athletes and report the successful recovery situations to the provincial sports committee. 

This document was issued in March, but by May, the Provincial Education Department and Provincial Sports Committee jointly issued “Several Regulations on Strictly Controlling Sports Talent Outflow,” which added an even tougher clause to the original policy:

For individual coaches across various levels and types of sports schools who engage in private transactions, favoritism, fraud, or allow talent to depart—once clearly investigated, they will face sanctions ranging from the lowering or revocation of technical titles to disqualification from evaluation, up to removal from their coaching positions, depending on the severity of the circumstances. If similar situations are found among individuals in education, public security, or other relevant departments, corresponding disciplinary sanctions will be recommended.

The sheer specificity of this document is striking.

During China’s reform era, it was understood that scientific, technical, management, and teaching talent, along with personnel from all industrial and agricultural sectors, needed to be mobile—a necessity for reform and opening up. This principle was encapsulated in the proverb, “Trees die when moved, people live when moved.” Why, then, was the most dynamic asset, sports talent, blocked from flowing? This can only be seen as a direct consequence of the rigid nature of our sports and competition systems.

Such strict prohibitions against talent flow are not unique to one locality; virtually all regions operate this way, creating a vast Chinese sports landscape characterized by “rarely meeting smiles in the human world, [but instead] bending bows at each other on battlefields.” The singular goal driving this conflict is the acquisition of gold medals.

Hebei Province's cycling team's impressive performance since 1987, however, demonstrates the vital importance of talent introduction. In June of that year, team member Zhao Gu, under the age of 21, significantly improved the national record for the women's 1000-meter time trials, resulting in China’s first international cycling master in timing events. The following month, the Hebei women's team set a new national record in the 3000-meter team pursuit. This formidable team, which quickly attracted national peer and media attention, had been established less than three years prior—leading many to question the source of this rapid success. Originally, coach Wang Zhenxin, who entered the sports world from the cycling powerhouse of Shanxi Province, had returned to Hebei. Since beginning his coaching role in Hebei, he received warm support from Shanxi: his brother was a leader at the Shanxi Sports Research Institute, and his sister-in-law was the Shanxi Provincial Sports Committee deputy director. Consequently, the decades of successes, failures, and both favorable and adverse circumstances of the Shanxi team were no secret to Wang Zhenxin. Leveraging this “blood relation,” Shanxi even sent the person most familiar with China's only athlete to have won World Championship cycling medals—the fiancé of famous athlete Zhou Suying—to assist Hebei. The result: Zhao Gu's style was remarkably similar to Zhou Suying's, making Shanxi's crucial role in this success self-evident.

This incident illustrates a dual meaning: the Hebei team clearly would not have progressed so rapidly without borrowing Shanxi's strength and assistance—underscoring the importance of talent exchange. Yet, the opportunity for this assistance was only secured through close family ties. Without such blood relations, transferring Shanxi's talent and expertise to Hebei would have been extremely difficult, thus conversely highlighting the severe difficulties facing true talent exchange in China's sports system.

This phenomenon, where one region possesses abundant talent it cannot fully utilize while another desperately lacks talent with no proper mechanism for matching, is not unique to sports. However, due to the inherent rigidity of the sports system, compounded by the gold medal factor—which directly impacts the honor, disgrace, and promotion of provincial and regional sports officials—this talent waste throughout the sports world becomes an alarmingly serious issue.

Consider Shanxi Province again: since the 1950s, it has laid solid foundations for motorcycle sports. Around the time of four National Games, Shanxi athletes excelled, producing batches of master-level contestants and national special-grade motorcycle riders beloved by the public. Yet, by the 5th National Games, because the competition did not include gold medals for this event, the Shanxi Provincial Sports Committee resolutely discontinued the project (not excluding financial difficulties). The roar of the iron steeds ceased, replaced by an unusual silence in the military sports compounds. Dozens of motorcycles lay covered in dust and rust in storerooms. More crucially, the people—the motorcycle sport masters and special-grade riders, often carrying lifelong injuries—scattered like birds and beasts to pursue individual futures; some became truck drivers, others postal workers, while another batch of core personnel remained idle, panicked, and with nothing to do.

Years ago, I often encountered Master Xiao Bai on the streets of Taiyuan, leisurely driving a sidecar tricycle, bargaining at vegetable shops, and then hauling the provisions back to cook for more idle people. Now, that sidecar tricycle is so broken it can barely run, yet Master Xiao Bai, visibly aging daily, still drives it to the market. In a flash, six years have passed.

For nearly seven years, this group—which deeply loves motorcycle careers—has submitted multiple reports to the provincial government's relevant leaders and the provincial sports committee (I once helped forward one to a vice-governor's secretary), pleading with the leadership to restore this project. They proposed that if the leadership faced genuine financial difficulties, they could establish motorcycle associations, self-funded teams, or public-private partnerships. Seeing thousands upon thousands of civilian motorcycles speeding through the streets of Bingzhou, and countless young people intensely excited about motorcycle sports—why couldn't they organize everyone into a competitive career? Why couldn't the vehicles fund their own operations? They suggested running short-term training classes and repair stations for citizens' motorcycles, while simultaneously scouting and cultivating prospects, establishing teams, and serving Shanxi and China in the future. This approach would save national funds while cultivating national talent, generating new value for themselves. This was a group with extraordinary, wasted talents!

But those reports disappeared like stones dropped into the sea. I remember the former motorcycle coach who had charged through battlefields, risking death nine times. That day, he drove Xiao Bai's vegetable cart, pulling me as we chased that elusive report around the provincial government compounds. After his hopes were dashed one by one, he drove the vehicle away disheartened, letting the throttle idle and the wheels roll forward slowly. After a long silence, this middle-aged man who had battled half his lifetime without bowing his head said miserably: “As long as they let us do this career—not living like dead people—anything would work!”

Suppressed Love

Recently, I once again visited the Chinese sports world's central area: Tiyuguan Street (Sports Arena Street) in Beijing's Dongcheng District, where the nation's athletic elite gather. After three cups of wine, I was privy to two pieces of information—little stories, really.

The first was about two badminton veterans: Zhang Ailing, repeatedly dominating, 1981 first World Games women's singles champion, women's doubles champion, multiple gold medalist; Chen Changjie, also a renowned Chinese player, similarly winning first World Games men's singles championship, multiple domestic and international gold medalist. These two were a natural pair. She was from Shanghai, he was from the northeast, sharing common aspirations and goals. Two people loving each other—wouldn't everyone be happy in theory? But no, in the Chinese sports world, things aren't so simple. The regulations for various sports teams are crystal clear: strictly prohibit visiting opposite-sex dormitories and avoid excessive intimacy between men and women. For instance, men's and women's badminton team members couldn't easily interact—at best, the women's team occasionally gathered in the men's team's large dormitory for a coach's lecture. Despite such limited opportunities, however, love always finds a way. They still managed to develop feelings for each other. 

During their supplementary cultural studies course, these two main team members—one from the men's division and one from the women's division—happened to be assigned the same desk. This arrangement, naturally, was even more wonderful, nourishing their burgeoning love like gentle rain. Unexpectedly, this completely natural and proper matter was seized upon by the authorities. “How outrageous! How could this not be strictly managed?!” they exclaimed.

Consequently, the pair inevitably became the targets of pointed criticism during collective meetings. The rationale was simple: without rules, how could military-style management be maintained? How could the athletes concentrate their energy on achieving national glory? However, the problem lay precisely here—had the authorities refrained from criticizing, and especially from publicly naming the athletes, the issue might have subsided. Instead, when it comes to love, the more criticism it receives, the more vigorous it becomes.

The two simply lost all concern for rules. They started chatting whenever they wanted to chat, strolling when they wanted to stroll, and openly shopping together on the streets! When pressed, Zhang Ailing burst out: “So what if we're really together—what will you do?” At the time, Chen Changjie shared a room with Han Jian, often confiding his inner troubles. Cleverly, whenever Zhang Ailing came to visit, Han Jian would slip out, giving the couple space. 

In the view of some team officials, this behavior was very taboo. If not handled immediately, discipline would collapse. Sports teams, after all, were not parks or marriage certificate distribution centers! Thus, they decided: although both athletes were key players, for the sake of the rules, they could not be lenient: one of them must be sent away from the team.

But the women's team coaches firmly disagreed with sending Zhang Ailing away. Zhang Ailing was a meritorious, key player; if she left, the women's team would surely suffer a loss. The men's team coaches also refused to send Chen Changjie packing back to Dalian. The state had invested heavily in cultivating Chen Changjie; after such great difficulty in establishing him as a main player, how could they easily send him home?

The matter hung suspended. The compounds around Longtan Lake, where the Chinese sports elite gathered, immediately boiled over, becoming centers for discussions of varying sizes around 1982, with all kinds of opinions being voiced. 

“Why must they separate us?” Zhang Ailing and Chen Changjie felt their hearts weighed down by two heavy stones. It was an extremely difficult situation. “Why don't we have the right to love?”

Matters grew increasingly tense, inevitably disrupting the normal training of China’s men’s and women’s badminton teams. With heavy international competitions ahead and the dates fast approaching, the issue had to be resolved. Appeals were therefore brought to a sports committee leader. Zhang Ailing also fought on all fronts: beyond seeking out leaders to protest the injustice, she even wrote to Sports Daily, hoping to gain support from public opinion. (I recently searched the newspaper for her letter but could not find it—unfortunately, readers never got to see it.) The pain of a forbidden relationship had become nearly unbearable, yet Sports Daily itself did not know how to intervene.

After serious consideration, the leader issued a decision: their romance was a small matter; international competition was a major one. On the eve of going abroad, they had to put the bigger picture first, unite, and strive to win gold medals. Proper ideological work should be done to ensure the badminton teams successfully completed the glorious task entrusted to them by the Party. Thus, neither Zhang Ailing nor Chen Changjie were removed.

The two held their breath and resolved to fight with everything they had in the upcoming overseas tournament, hoping to bring honor home. Unfortunately, because of the physical and mental exhaustion they had suffered beforehand—combined with overwhelming pressure and continuous setbacks during the competition—neither Zhang nor Chen was able to surpass their previous performances. They returned home disappointed.

At that moment, new badminton talents were beginning to rise, and the officials’ resolve to remove the couple only hardened. Not long afterward, China’s once-iconic badminton heroes, Zhang Ailing and Chen Changjie, left Longtan Lake one after another, tearfully bidding farewell to their teammates.

According to those familiar with the situation, given Zhang and Chen’s ability at the time, they could easily have regained top form and continued serving the country for several more years. But for love alone they fell midway, leaving far too soon. After their departure from the national teams, Zhang Ailing settled in Shanghai while Chen Changjie returned to Dalian. Yet the emotional bond between them never wavered: they wrote letters, their hearts resolute. They eventually married, with Chen moving to Shanghai. Both became coaches for the Shanghai badminton team, finally united as husband and wife.

Still, their athletic careers ended prematurely, to the regret of many.

That was one story of the past. Another is now unfolding.

The Chinese gymnastics team’s main athlete, 26-year-old veteran Xu Zhiqiang, had long gone without the nourishment of love—simply because relentless daily training left him no time to think about it. By 1987, however, when he was shining brilliantly in international competitions, love arrived at the same time: an Australian girl had fallen for him. Their romance was fresh, lively, and full of delight. Whenever they met, they whispered closely; and in a city as vast as Beijing with countless places to go, they still found nowhere to hide—often seen walking hand in hand along the wide boulevard of Sports Arena Road. To say it wasn’t public would be self-deception; it was, in truth, quite public.

The publicity itself wasn’t the issue. “Relevant officials” soon appeared to counsel him, reasoning with logic, appealing to emotion, sincerely hoping that the “prodigal son” would turn back and the “lost one” find his way again. But Xu Zhiqiang was not someone who would be frightened away from love. A man who loved was loved—why should he not dare to speak of it? Why treat love as something shameful? So he calmly and methodically stated his request to the officials: he had decided to marry the Australian girl. When his first request was refused, he simply made it again—his intention unchanged.

There was nothing illegal or unreasonable in Xu Zhiqiang’s demand, but the officials stalled. Xu was a core national-team athlete with strategic expectations placed upon him—how could they dare give him a clear answer? The matter dragged on without resolution. Yet the Australian girl who loved him cared nothing about such complications. Whenever she could, she came to be by his side—flying across the sky again and again, accompanying him even to Guangzhou for the 6th National Games, looking after his training and daily life there.

All the while, Xu Zhiqiang repeated the same words: “I want to get married.”

At last, the officials responded helplessly: “Little Xu, this isn’t something we have the authority to decide. You may be training with the national teams, but you came from the Bayi Team—you’re still on active military duty. How can we agree to this?”

Xu Zhiqiang immediately submitted his request to the Bayi Team with just one message: “I should get married. If my superiors won’t agree, then I can only request to retire. As much as I love gymnastics—much as I am devoted to this sport—I should still get married.”

I find Xu Zhiqiang's marriage request completely understandable and completely legal. A 26-year-old young man would already be a father elsewhere. Why can't Chinese athletes date and marry like normal people?

Within our professional sports system, management is almost militarized—extremely strict. When athletes reach an age where it’s natural to develop romantic feelings and express them openly, once discovered, they are met with criticism, lectures, or even harsh punishment. Unless they keep everything hidden and never get caught. Over the years, countless young men and women have been expelled or sent home. In comparison, Xu Zhiqiang was treated with unusual leniency.

As a result, many Chinese athletes carry deep wounds in their hearts, living with a spiritual emptiness and quiet confusion.

Many leaders and coaches in professional teams treat love as if it were a flood to be guarded against. They use all kinds of strategies—clever, restrictive measures—to prevent love from taking root, even going so far as to separate male and female athletes. How many Chinese athletes have been forced to choose painfully between love and retirement, or even expulsion?

If you open the Sports Daily from October 31, 1987, you’ll find an article by Zhang Xiaolin and Zhou Shoujin documenting the Chinese football team’s training journey, which includes this passage:

“Football players contribute far more than just on the field. Before the Chinese team traveled to Brazil for training and matches, center forward Ma Lin solemnly handed us a cigarette and quietly said: This cigarette has meaning.

What meaning? After we pressed him several times, he hesitated and finally confessed that he was married—and then begged us not to reveal it. He said: ‘We Chinese have a habit—marriage seems to mean your athletic career has reached its final stop. If fans found out I was married, they would definitely curse me.’”

It is, truly, a strange logic. Why should marriage be equated with the end of an athlete’s career? Yet this is the reality our athletes must endure.

I don’t know the full story of Ma Lin’s love life, so I won’t comment carelessly. But now that he can be with former Hunan handball player Li Yunhui, I consider him fortunate. You know, many Chinese athletes never enjoy such luck—some do not even dare to imagine it.

This can only be counted as another sorrow of Chinese sports. Professional teams restrict their athletes from dating or marrying, yet once athletes reach a certain level of physical and emotional maturity, marriage and family become a natural path. This contradiction inevitably produces three outcomes. First, athletes endure harsh, inhumane repression during their training years—emotional suppression that at times borders on distortion. Second, once they grow older, they become restless, weary of the training routine, and deeply anxious about their futures. Third, Chinese athletes end up with some of the shortest athletic careers in the world.

In late summer and early autumn of 1987, I visited several training bases under the State Sports Commission’s Training Bureau. Hundreds—thousands—of China’s most treasured athletes lived there. I walked through the gymnastics, diving, table tennis, badminton, and women’s basketball teams, observing their daily training. What I saw was striking: almost no one smiled. I found only two exceptions. One was Li Ning—the “Prince of Gymnastics”—who smiled only when he stepped into the hallway to take a phone call. The other was Zheng Haixia of the women’s basketball team, who had the