Heroes Of Chinas Great Leap Forward

Author : Richard King
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 082483402X
Total Pages : 146 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Heroes of China's Great Leap Forward written by Richard King and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2010-05-10 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heroes of China’s Great Leap Forward presents contrasting narratives of the most ambitious and disastrous mass movement in modern Chinese history. The objective of the Great Leap, when it was launched in the late 1950s, was to catapult China into the ranks of the great military and industrial powers with no assistance from the outside world; it resulted in a famine that killed tens of millions of the nation’s peasants. Li Zhun’s "A Brief Biography of Li Shuangshuang," written while the movement was underway, celebrates the Great Leap as it was supposed to be: a time of optimism, dynamism, and shared purpose. A spirited young peasant woman, freed from the restrictions of home life, launches a canteen and wins the recognition of authorities and the admiration of her husband. The story—and the film that followed it—made Li Shuangshuang the greatest fictional heroine of the Great Leap. In contrast, Zhang Yigong’s short novel The Story of the Criminal Li Tongzhong, written two decades later, was one of the first works published in China to suggest a much darker side to the Great Leap. A village official leads a raid on a state granary to feed starving peasants; he is later arrested and dies a criminal. Although Zhang stopped short of portraying the horrors of famine, his tone of moral outrage provides a rejoinder to the triumphalism of "Li Shuangshuang." The stories are accompanied by an introduction to the Great Leap and portraits of the two writers, including their recollections of that traumatic time and the creation of their very different heroes.

Author : Yang Jisheng
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 0374277931
Total Pages : 658 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Tombstone written by Yang Jisheng and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 658 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the famine that killed roughly thirty-six million Chinese during the Great Leap Forward examines how the communist ideologies and collectivization campaigns perpetuated by the country's leaders caused the catastrophe.

Author : Frank Dikötter
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 080277928X
Total Pages : 449 pages
Book Rating : 4.81/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Mao's Great Famine written by Frank Dikötter and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize An unprecedented, groundbreaking history of China's Great Famine that recasts the era of Mao Zedong and the history of the People's Republic of China. "Between 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up to and overtake Britain in less than 15 years The experiment ended in the greatest catastrophe the country had ever known, destroying tens of millions of lives." So opens Frank Dikötter's riveting, magnificently detailed chronicle of an era in Chinese history much speculated about but never before fully documented because access to Communist Party archives has long been restricted to all but the most trusted historians. A new archive law has opened up thousands of central and provincial documents that "fundamentally change the way one can study the Maoist era." Dikötter makes clear, as nobody has before, that far from being the program that would lift the country among the world's superpowers and prove the power of Communism, as Mao imagined, the Great Leap Forward transformed the country in the other direction. It became the site not only of "one of the most deadly mass killings of human history,"--at least 45 million people were worked, starved, or beaten to death--but also of "the greatest demolition of real estate in human history," as up to one-third of all housing was turned into rubble). The experiment was a catastrophe for the natural world as well, as the land was savaged in the maniacal pursuit of steel and other industrial accomplishments. In a powerful mesghing of exhaustive research in Chinese archives and narrative drive, Dikötter for the first time links up what happened in the corridors of power-the vicious backstabbing and bullying tactics that took place among party leaders-with the everyday experiences of ordinary people, giving voice to the dead and disenfranchised. His magisterial account recasts the history of the People's Republic of China.

Author : C J Barker
Publisher : Book Guild Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1835740685
Total Pages : 251 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Hungry Ghosts written by C J Barker and published by Book Guild Publishing. This book was released on 2024-03-28 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The lives of Vic Woods and Ruth Wolfe, working-class teenagers from Liverpool and London, are profoundly disrupted by the arrival of World War II. Ruth’s journey leads her to aerial photographic interpretation, though her aspirations for advancement are denied, while Vic’s wartime experiences with bomber command haunt him long after the war is over. Their post-war marriage and tumultuous relationship with their son, James, make for a gripping narrative of trauma, conflict and, ultimately, love. Set against the backdrop of World War II and the social upheaval of the late 1960s, Hungry Ghosts transports readers into the drama of two pivotal eras in history, exploring the intergenerational impact of war, particularly on the intricate relationships between fathers and sons. Hungry Ghosts is not just a war story; it’s a timeless exploration of family bonds and the indelible scars left by war.

Author : Yang Jisheng
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 0374716919
Total Pages : 768 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The World Turned Upside Down written by Yang Jisheng and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yang Jisheng’s The World Turned Upside Down is the definitive history of the Cultural Revolution, in withering and heartbreaking detail. As a major political event and a crucial turning point in the history of the People’s Republic of China, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) marked the zenith as well as the nadir of Mao Zedong’s ultra-leftist politics. Reacting in part to the Soviet Union’s "revisionism" that he regarded as a threat to the future of socialism, Mao mobilized the masses in a battle against what he called "bourgeois" forces within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This ten-year-long class struggle on a massive scale devastated traditional Chinese culture as well as the nation’s economy. Following his groundbreaking and award-winning history of the Great Famine, Tombstone, Yang Jisheng here presents the only history of the Cultural Revolution by an independent scholar based in mainland China, and makes a crucial contribution to understanding those years' lasting influence today. The World Turned Upside Down puts every political incident, major and minor, of those ten years under extraordinary and withering scrutiny, and arrives in English at a moment when contemporary Chinese governance is leaning once more toward a highly centralized power structure and Mao-style cult of personality.

Author : Felix Wemheuer
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107123704
Total Pages : 349 pages
Book Rating : 4.00/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Social History of Maoist China written by Felix Wemheuer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-28 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new social history of Maoist China provides an accessible view of the complex and tumultuous period when China came under Communist rule.

Author : Xun Zhou
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300175183
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.89/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Great Famine in China, 1958-1962 written by Xun Zhou and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-10 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on previously closed archives that have since been made inaccessible again, this volume contains the most crucial primary documents concerning the fate of the Chinese peasantry between 1957 and 1962, covering everything from cannibalism and selective killing to mass murder.

Author : Jean-luc Domenach
Publisher : Westview Press
ISBN 13 : 9780813325149
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.45/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Origins Of The Great Leap Forward written by Jean-luc Domenach and published by Westview Press. This book was released on 1996-03-21 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first major study of the Great Leap Forward, this seminal volume has now been translated into English for a wider audience. Like no other work, it suggests compelling political and social answers to questions that have long plagued scholars: How could a party with such a successful rural base launch a movement so divorced from reality—especially in the countryside? Why was the movement pressed to the point of social chaos and economic collapse, giving rise to arguably the greatest famine in human history?Utilizing a wealth of primary material, Jean-Luc Domenach focuses on the central China province of Henan, which emerged as a national model of the Great Leap and was one of the most devastated by its failure. The author's documentary sources enable him to illuminate the development of provincial and local political life as well as to gauge popular reactions to the dictates of the center. Domenach presents a lucid analysis of the setbacks in agriculture in 1956 and 1957, the rise of economic corruption, and the launch of the CCP rectification campaign in 1957.Despite the enormous impact of the Great Leap on Chinese politics and economics in the decades that followed, it has proven immensely difficult to research. Domenach's contribution thus stands out as an original and important work on the period.

Author : Roderick MACFARQUHAR
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674040414
Total Pages : 742 pages
Book Rating : 4.10/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Mao's Last Revolution written by Roderick MACFARQUHAR and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 742 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains why Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, and shows his Machiavellian role in masterminding it. This book documents the Hobbesian state that ensued. Power struggles raged among Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Qing - Mao's wife and leader of the Gang of Four - while Mao often played one against the other.

Author : Kimberley Ens Manning
Publisher : UBC Press
ISBN 13 : 0774859555
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Eating Bitterness written by Kimberley Ens Manning and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949, Mao Zedong declared that "not even one person shall die of hunger." Yet some 30 million peasants died of starvation and exhaustion during the Great Leap Forward. Eating Bitterness reveals how men and women in rural and urban settings, from the provincial level to the grassroots, experienced the changes brought on by the party leaders' attempts to modernize China. This landmark volume lifts the curtain of party propaganda to expose the suffering of citizens and the deeply contested nature of state-society relations in Maoist China.