Enforced Rustication in the Chinese Cultural Revolution

During China’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and ’70s, zhiqing (educated youth) or the lost generation were sent to the countryside to receive reeducation from poor peasants, as decreed by Chairman Mao Zedong. In answer to Chairman Mao’s call, millions of middle school and high school graduates went to the countryside. They settled down in villages; they hoed the earth; they handpicked cotton and handplanted rice seedlings; they learned to cook, they slept on straws; they read by candles or k