The Chinese memory of the 1950s, like the American memory of the 1950s, is often gilded and in the Chinese case, delimited by the official versions of the decade given by the state: either the pre-1978 government version of the 1950s as a society of order and prosperity, or the post-1978 version of political campaigns, hardships, conflicts, and persecutions. This week's further online reading: Political campaigns in 1950s China helps to explain some of the political turmoils in the 1950s. To summarize, after establishing a Communist regime in 1949, two groups within the Communist Party, one from an educated and middle class background, and the other from a rural, illiterate, and often poor background, found themselves moving in different directions: one wanting a more technocratic approach to economy and collective leadership, emphasizing urban industrialization and quality education especially in the urban areas, and the other group feeling itself excluded or marginalized in this process. The Communist Party leader Mao Tse-tung decided to champion a populist approach to politics, reducing the number of years of education from 12 years to 10 so funding for rural education would be more available, establishing collectivized farming: the People's Commune (1958), and even making steel production a populist movement in the Great Leap Forward movement of 1958. The end result was disaster and three years of famine from 1959-1961 partly because of the neglect of agriculture in having the whole nation work on steel production. Political campaigns were renewed after a few years of lull period (1961-65) in an attempt to completely shake off the Communist leaders who championed regular economic development through mass popular movements in the name of a cultural transformation--the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). It was only after the death of Mao in 1976 that the Communist leaders, including Deng Xiaoping who was persecuted in the Cultural Revolution, decided to steer China onto a road of economic reform along Western lines. Reform first started in the countryside in the form of individiual families contracting land from the state and dissolution of the People's Commune a few years later, to industrial and urban reform, moving China onto a dual economic system--with state regulated and market economies coexisting, with the ultimate goal to moving China onto a more developed market economy

Gail Hershatter, a professor of history at University of California, Santa Cruz, interviewed rural Chinese women from four villages in central and southern Shaanxi Province, a province traditionally considered poor and backward in northwestern China, from 1996 to 2001, on their memories of their lives through the Communist years, from the 1950s to the 1970s economic reform, in an attempt to fill in the gap between the official version of the history in those decades and the every day lives through those years. Her interviews were assisted by Gao Xiaoxian (last name first), research office director of the Shaanxi Provincial Women's Federation.

One of the results of Hershatter's interviews is that although a framework of memory was in place, the official version, defining China before and after 1949 as pre- and post- [Communist] liberation China, punctuated by political campaigns and state evaluations of them, many rural women who were not taught this framework did not define their memory this way. Although the state wielded a great amount of control of society, the particular policies and political tactics as well as understandings all varied from region to region. (Hershatter, 46) What she shows in this essay is a fascinating picture of how women wove their private life exeperiences with socialist policies and traditional values in their memory and their code of conduct.

How much were individual memories and practices given significance and structure by state policies?

One of the interviewees was Cao Zhuxiang (last name first) who was a labor model and who suffered many hardships in life but who nonetheless was able to become a successful local woman leader and made good use of her capabilities. In Communist China, the government routinely selected individuals from the factories and countryside to become labor models for the whole country to emulate. Cao was one of them. Cao's significance lay in that what she did fitted in the Communist policies of the time: in the 1950s, because of a lack of male laborers in her household, she and a few women organized into a collective spinning yarn and weaving cloth, and organized a mutual aid group in 1952, actually helping move her village into a rural collective. (Hershatter, 46-48) Although the Communists took over China in 1949, they allowed peasants to retain their private land until 1955, Rural collectives were established in 1954 to encourage peasants to pull together their land and draft animals to farm together, and in 1958, the People's Commune was established when peasants were all grouped into communes and all land transferred to state ownership.

In a different context, such as America, Cao Zhuxiang could have been interpreted as a self-made woman: a poor widow who established a weaving factory of her own, and who would, in a private economy, probably become its owner. But in China, where private ownership was being abolished in the 1950s, she became celebrated as one who led peasant women from private ownership of their land and resources into collectives. Cao's private instinct of survival and desperation over the future of her life and that of her children were now translated into the socialist rhetoric of leading peasants out of private ownership into collectives. In this case, her activities were given meaning by the socialist collectivization context. The methodological argument Hershatter makes on p.48, quoting Timothy Mitchell, is meant to convey the idea that state policies should not be viewed as existing in isolation from individual practices because state policies could never have any effect without local improvisation of them. Therefore, state policies should not be strictly understood as what is stated on paper, but as ideas implemented through individual interpretations of them in the countryside. In the particular context of this essay, what Hershatter tries to explore is how state policies' presentation of the changes in women's lives from pre to post-1949 China contrasts with a greater continuity between the two as well as a creative interpretation of Communist gender policies by individual women. (Hershatter, 49)

Therefore, we can view this essay as a continuation of the discussion of women and memory. It complements our previous readings on women in giving us a story not from the outside, but the Chinese women themselves, according to their memory of how their lives changed after the Communist takeover.

The coexistence of traditional and Communist values in women labor models.

The story of Cao Zhuxiang exemplifies that Cao's becoming a woman labor model in Communist China was not completely the success of Communist policies of gender equality. She would not have become a labor model if she had been charged "loose," someone who had a casual relationship with men, as a labor model had to be someone others would want to emulate. Traditional moral codes continue to exert a heavy influence on women's conducts in Communist China. Further, an irony of the Communist policies is that while there may be a policy to liberate women, such as the Marriage Law, legalizing marriaged based on free love instead of parental arrangement, many women including Cai Zhuxiang would not benefit from it because for them, they did not even have the concept of love or companionship. For them, marriage meant toil and procreation of children, and that was that. It shows that if a policy is to take effect, its implications have to be understood by the majority of the population first. (Hershatter, 52-53)

Hershatter argues that the traditional and modern values were seamlessly woven in the life of Cao Zhuxiang, in her desire to raise her son, her struggle for honor--a traditional reference of widows who decided not to remarry and stay chaste, both being traditional goals of widows; and her economic independence, now encouraged by the Communist regime, because they all point to selfless devotion to others, enabling her to serve as the model for selfless devotion to the collective. (p.54) In this process the dictates of the state (selfless devotion to the party, to the collective) become implemented through the individual agendas of people like Cao.

Memory as gendered space

In arguing for looking at the localized and individualized impacts of Communist policies on women, Hershatter argues that one impact of women's liberation was gendered space, and in the particular story of Cao Zhuxiang, it was how her activities outside of her household, sanctioned and encouraged by the Communist state, became the center around which many women wove their memories. This would not have been possible had Cao followed traditional dictates of women and stayed home most of the time or farmed only her own land.

The importance of distinguishing memories shaded and not shaded by traditional ideas of gender roles.

Hershatter shows that in many cases, women's memories were also shaped by traditional gender roles instead of what they actually experienced in life. (pp.55-57) This was significant because state policies, in light of what women actually did instead of what they said they did as influenced by traditional gender roles, shows the significance of Communist policies of gender equality was not really to free women out of the entrapment of their homes, which they were doing already, but to encourage and legalize their doing so, and to promote those who did so well to leadership positions and the status of labor models.

Women's chronology of the socialist era.

Despite the categories imposed on society by the Communist regime, these categories have often been appropriated by women to suit their own understanding of the events around them. Therefore women activists for instance were likely to use political campaigns to punctuate time in their memories. (Hershatter, 59-60) But for the majority of country women who were not particularly active in political campaigns, their memories then lacked an overall structure through that long a time span, from the 1950s to the 1990s. There were lapses. These memory lapses lead Hershatter to question the significance of political movements in these women's lives--how much they outweighed, say, the endless labor and hardship women had to go through on a daily basis, or freed women from such labor, which would have enabled a better memory of them. It also leads to the question of whether the Chinese women actually underwent a revolution, supposing that the Chinese men actually did. (62-64)

What complicates the memory of these women is that they are not just recounting their lives through pure recollection, but also doing a summary of their lives in the process, This was also reflected in Hershatter's interviews with Cao Zhuxiang, when she was frustrated by Cao's flat narrative of her life experiences throughout the 1950s and 1960s as a series of political meetings, which, she matter of factly said, did not allow her time to execute her duties as a mother in presiding over her daughter's marriage or paying tribute to the customs honoring her newly wed daughter and son-in-law. (64-68) Hershatter concluded that such narratives did not show Cao as a boring female Communist leader or a heartless mother, but rather Cao's dedication to the Communist cause and even if she did feel bad about not officiating over her daughter's wedding, this was not the version of herself that she wanted to make public. Toward the end of her life, she wanted to present herself as a dedicated Communist and labor model who tirelessly worked for the benefit of the community.