Chairman Mao's Children
Generation and the Politics of Memory in China

Exploration of how China's 'sent-down' generation have come to terms with their difficult past, caught between the political and personal.

Bin Xu (Author)

9781108928786, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 15 December 2022

286 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.42 kg

'… Xu's study is a fresh experiment and an undoubted contribution to the already relatively mature research field of educated youth, as it not only fills academic gaps but also meets the needs of the general public.' Jiawen Sun, The China Quarterly

In the 1960s and 1970s, around 17 million Chinese youths were mobilized or forced by the state to migrate to rural villages and China's frontiers. Bin Xu tells the story of how this 'sent-down' generation have come to terms with their difficult past. Exploring representations of memory including personal life stories, literature, museum exhibits, and acts of commemoration, he argues that these representations are defined by a struggle to reconcile worthiness with the political upheavals of the Mao years. These memories, however, are used by the state to construct an official narrative that weaves this generation's experiences into an upbeat story of the 'China dream'. This marginalizes those still suffering and obscures voices of self-reflection on their moral-political responsibility for their actions. Xu provides careful analysis of this generation of 'Chairman Mao's children', caught between the political and the personal, past and present, nostalgia and regret, and pride and trauma.

Introduction
1. Winners' stories
2. Unequal memories
3. The wasted years and a land of wonder: The literary memory
4. Regretless Youth and Long Live Youth!: Exhibits and museums as sites of memory
5. Nostalgia, resistance, and the pursuit of happiness: Generation and memory in groups
6. 'Comrades from five lakes and four seas!': When groups chuanlian (link up)
Conclusion
Appendix: Methods and data.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP], Social & cultural history [HBTB], Asian history [HBJF]