Introduction
“The north wind blows, the snowflakes whirl. A flurry of snow brings in New Year.” Zhao tearily sings along the lyrics of “North Wind Blows” from the Chinese opera White-Haired Girl that was propagated during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as one of the revolutionary “model plays” (yangbanxi). Sitting on her kitchen chair, sixty-year-old Chinese-Canadian, tells her story of experiencing the revolution to me during an interview. She is a thin and petite Beijing local with large and round eyes, defined cheekbones, and grey hair. I chose her as my subject of interviewee because of the drastic effects the Chinese policy change of the revolution had on her life. The influences the revolution made on her life do not stem materialistically, but instead she carries the experience emotionally with her everyday. The play White-Haired Girl still have emotional influences on Zhao because of her personal connection to the main character, Xi’er, multidimensionally in experiencing the Cultural Revolution that empowered, liberated, and revolutionized her. These micro influences were caused by the macro structural forces and the propagated opera of White-Haired Girl was able to narrate these individual stories. The play, as one of the only two model plays that featured a female lead, carried the same understandings of elements in family, hardships, symbolic materials, and feminism of Zhao, from the revolution to today, in which I will discuss in four separate sections. I initiated the interview for the purpose of a broad picture of the Cultural Revolution; however, her narrative mostly focused on the White-Haired Girl and thus led to the synthesis of this profile. This ethnographic account will proceed as the same order as the interview chronology; the full name of the interviewee will not be used to protect privacy.
The White-Haired Girl Background
The White-Haired Girl, originally written by Ding Yi and He Jingzhi, was incorporated into the “Eight Models of Modern Revolutionary Art” along with the Red Detachment of Women.[1] As the model plays were high regulated and told stories to show the drastic difference of China pre- and post-liberation in order to glorify the close connection between the People’s Liberation Army and the “common people”.[2] These models were played in all institutions including schools, factories, and fields.[3] Almost every Chinese man, woman, and child have watched at least one of the model plays and because of the relatability of the plays; the commoners were able to contextualize their life story to the plots of the plays.[4] Through the purposive model play, the whole society can be mobilized and educated in the same dimensions.
Family
Paternal Relationship
In the closing scene of the White-Haired Girl, Xi’er and the villagers sang “Red Sun is Chairman Mao. Red Sun is the Communist Party”.[5] This is to enforce the hit-home message of the Communist Party’s positive influence that was able to free the villagers from suffering, similar to the singing of “East is Red” by the Chen villagers, located in Guangzhou.[6] Zhao enjoyed singing revolutionary songs because it created sense of closeness to those around her: the only time Zhao has heard her father sing was at Tiananmen Square when he also sang “East is Red” among the crowd. When the entire country was apprehensive about the future and the overall atmosphere was tense, music allowed people like Zhao to experience some relaxation, as “sounds amidst the fury”.[7] Musical plays are an important tools to “revolutionize, nationalize, and popularize” the propagandist film, according to Premier Zhou Enlai.[8]
Zhao explains that every time she hears the song “North Wind Blows” she will immediately tear up since she reflects back on the past decade of her immigration process to Canada and connects this period to the time she was watching the White-Haired Girl during the revolution. More importantly, with the death of her father, she will now reflect the memories she has shared with him during the song. The song provides a tunnel for her to view her life comprehensively, viewing her revolutionary years through contemporary lens. The generation has moved on but Zhao’s sentiments toward this song have not.The play carries the significance of her suffering across the Atlantic Ocean; the new meaning behind her emotions felt toward the play does not rest on a Cultural Revolution political context anymore but rather fluctuates with the status quo around her.
Spousal Relationship
The White-Haired Girl is also a signifier of what spousal relations looked like during the revolution. When Xi’er reunited with Dachun in the mountains near the end of the play, they maintain an “asexual distance” because they are reconciled as neighbours and comrades, not as lovers despite the fact that he was her fiancé.[9] The writes did not provide a love story and instead of romanticizing the relationship between them, the connection between Xi’er and Dachun resembles that of a family – the big family of the revolutionary because of the mutual “class feeling” (jieti ganqing) that bring them closer.[10] Zhao says she does not call her spouse “husband” (laogong) but instead they call each other by their full names and during the years of revolution, they referred each other by “comrade” (tongzhi). This term was used commonly despite “social standing, status, age, sex, or relation”.[11] Although many couples a decade younger than Zhao and her husband display signs of affection, Zhao remains emotionally neutral.
Hardships
Hunger and Thriftiness
The hardships Zhao experienced due to the revolution led to the formation of her strong work ethics and her thrifty spending habits despite financial stability. The opera White-Haired Girl opens by Xi’er monologue on New Year’s Eve, waiting for her father to return.[12] As a filial daughter, Xi’er made some flour cakes for him to eat when he comes home; she sings that he will bring some food back with him and they will enjoy the New Year holiday together.[13] By connecting a commoners’ holiday of Chinese New Year to the play, the audience members could immediately relate their personal lives to it even before the plot introduction. This is Zhao’s most memorable scene from the play. Zhao recalls sitting in front the grain cabinet in the family courtyard, spending hours guarding it to ensure no thieves would take their family’s grain rations while waiting for her father to return from work. The nation suffered from severe food shortages from the years of 1959-1961 during the Great Leap Forward; both rural and urban grain ration declined from 203 kg in 1957 to 163.5 in 1960.[14] Hunger was not rare; Zhao valued rice and flour the most during these years and “having a full stomach was world’s best feeling”, which was only obtained when Zhao’s father returned home with food.[15] This has also led to her habit of thriftiness today in Canada; she despised luxurious goods and lives a minimalistic life – her wardrobe was plain and outdated; her home was not close to lavishly decorated. Although her family is financially well-off, her old consumption habits and mentality of saving and sacrificing have not taken a back seat.
Sent-down Youth Years and Work Ethics
Moreover, Zhao’s work ethics resembled those of Xi’er because of her tireless working habits and the pain during the sent-down youth years. During the interview, Zhao started to prepare for dinner. She ran to the backyard to extract home-grown green onions and proceeds to explain that the majority of the knowledge she has on growing food organically came from the sent-down youth period. Zhao was sent down to the countryside to “learn from the peasants” by doing manual labour.[16] During the decade of the revolution, 18 million urban youths were sent down to “reduce disparities in opportunities” between the city and the rural.[17] Mao believed that the future of China were in the hands of young people as they are the most “active and vital force in society”.[18] Instead of choosing to complete high school education, Zhao went with her close friend at the time to the rural side to experience class struggle and have “close contact with the masses of workers and peasants”.[19] The heavy manual labour she committed herself to was apparent seeing her quick and smooth preparation of dinner ingredients. In the White-Haired Girl, education was not prioritized by Xi’er after she returns to the community from years spent in the mountain cave. She joins the revolutionary force first. To Zhao, Xi’er was not an educated woman but was a “physically competent” or nenggan, empowered, and revolutionary one.
“Eating Bitterness” (chiku)
Although she did not enjoy the blood, sweat, and tears shed in rural China, she thinks that the younger generations of Chinese lack experiences of “eating bitterness” (chiku), which decreases their work efficiency. During the years spent in the countryside, Zhao had to endure her severe menstruation cramps and stand bare feet in the freezing water in order to farm. Zhao feels a connection to Xi’er as her hair has all turned grey in less than five years because of high stress due to settling down in a new country. The revolutionary spirit in Xi’er is parallel to the one Zhao possesses in her everyday life and particularly in regards to her immigration experience: Zhao moved to Canada with her two children by herself in 2008 and has built a “home” in a foreign place. Overcoming language barriers, discrimination, and lack of social networks, Zhao has managed to purchase a house and lives with stability. She felt helpless in the first week after she landed in Toronto and she was determined on moving back to Beijing because of the overwhelming unfamiliarity and culture shock. The character Xi’er underwent severe poverty, rape, abduction, maltreatment, and humiliation but she persevered until the very end: “There is nothing one cannot overcome”, Zhao says.[20]
Symbolic Materials
The Little Red Book
For Zhao, the White Haired Girl is connected with the Little Red Book because they were introduced to her simultaneously and reinforced one another. To Zhao, the play did not end when Xi’er joined the Liberation Army forces.[21] Zhao imagines Xi’er having children with Dachun and the entire family reading the Little Red Book. The Little Red Book was seen as a weapon of mass instruction and “a source of strength and a spiritual bomb of infinite power”, one that imperialists did not have.[22] [23] Zhao remembers watching the film in the audience with many others who were all holding a copy of the book in their hand; sounds of weeping and sobbing were widespread when Xi’er was liberated. Zhao remembers the Little Red Book as the only textbook studied in her elementary school; however, she cannot recollect the content of Mao’s quotations in the book.
Similar to peasants in Chen Village, both literate and illiterate people around her had a copy of the book and “vigorously waved these on cue” during various political and social events.[24] The significance of the book does not exist solely in the meanings behind Mao’s words but also the act of reading it. These actions are spread from top to down because the central authority of the Chinese Communist Party during the revolution: officials including Premier Zhou Enlai and Defense Minister Lin Biao were photographed pledging loyalty to Mao by waving the book.[25] Especially after the endorsement of the White-Haired Girl play by Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou in 1967, the connection between the Little Red Book and the play became only clearer for Zhao since she read the book and watched the play countless times simultaneously.[26] The two are inseparable as the plot of the play demonstrated the perfect example of revolutionary spirit, which the Little Red Book emphasizes. The meanings and intentions behind the book and the revolution itself not only influenced people on the surface, but rather “touches people to their very souls. It also touches the essence of… deepest point of their world outlook… touches the roads one travelled and those one will experience in the future, and touches the entire history of China’s revolution”.[27]
Female Liberation and the Participation in Formal Labour Force
The Cultural Revolution also brought along the liberation of women as Mao encouraged women to “join in productive activity” and that they must receive equal pay for equal work.[28] Zhao was certain that if this story was true, Xi’er would be a working woman actively taking part in the labour force and contributing to the revolution.[29] During the revolution, large number of urban women entered “heavy industry, including the fields of iron and steel, construction, mining… broke the traditional employment pattern of female concentration in light and service industries”, including Zhao.[30] When Zhao returned to the city of Beijing from being sent-down, she was allocated to different work units under various industries. Since it was the sole responsibility of the government for “employment and job assignment”, what her work entails and what she would be doing ten hours a day completed depended on the needs of the Party.[31]
It is not coincidental that Mao and Zhou endorsed plays with female leading characters but they had the intent of encouraging women to dominate their own life as well as utilizing their labour ability to the fullest. The character of Huang Shiren, the cruel landlord, has said at the beginning of the musical that “women are cheap as dirt”.[32] However, he was at the end publically denounced at a mass peasants’ meeting – a subtle message here is that those who do not respect the equality between men and women will face negative consequences. Thus although the musical desexualizes Xi’er into a revolutionary hero, her status as a woman was nonetheless empowered due to the revolution and Mao’s message of gender equality.[33] Zhao knew that she was stratified and restrained in society but did not understand the full extent of it until she watched the “feminist” model play of the White-Haired Girl. Sensibly, the only other piece of media resource Zhao mentioned during the interview was the Red Detachment of Women, which is the other female-led model play.
Conclusion
The “north wind” has sent Zhao through numerous Chinese policy changes as well as overseas to Canada. Despite how severe this flurry of the “north wind”may blow, Zhao continues to use the Xi’er’s revolutionary spirit to continue on. Zhao has developed a deep connection to Xi’er and this play was present in shaping her paternal relationship, spousal relationship, lifestyle, and work ethic. In experiencing the Cultural Revolution that empowered, liberated, and revolutionized her, Zhao internalized the macro structural forces into her personal life. One can speculate that the play of the White-Haired Girl did not only have such drastic influences to Zhao in this particular generation; there are still many stories that are left untold and unheard.
Bibliography
Bernstein, Thomas. “Stalinism, famine, and Chinese peasants.” Theory and Society 13, no. 3 (1984): 339-77. 343.
Chan Anita, Richard Madsen, and Jonathan Unger. “A Leftward Lunch and a Solid Footing.” Chen Village: Revolution to Globalization. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Clark, Paul. “Elaborating Culture: Dance, Music, Stage, and Fine Arts.” The Chinese Cultural Revolution: A History, 157-202. London: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Cook, Alexander C. “Introduction: The spiritual atom bomb and its global fallout.” In Mao’s Little Red Book: A Global History, 1-22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Donald, Stephanie Hemelryk. “Seeing White – Female Whiteness and the Purity of Children in Australian, Chinese and British Visual Culture.” Social Semiotics 10 no. 2 (2000): 157-171. 159.
Hinton, Carma, Geremie Barme, and Richard Gordon, Morning Sun. DVD. Directed by Carma Hinton, Geremie Barme, and Richard Gordon. 2003.
Jin, Yihong. “Rethinking the ‘Iron Girls’: Gender and Labour during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.” Gender & History 18 (2006): 613-634. 614.
Kraus, Richard Curt Kraus. “Politics in Command.” The Cultural Revolution: A Very Short Introduction, 24-43. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. 32.
Mao, Zedong. “Serving the People.” Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1966. 290.
Mittler, Barbara. “Cultural Revolution Model Works and the Politics of Modernization in China: An Analysis of ‘Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy’.” The World of Music 45 no. 2 (2003): 53-81.
Qian, Zhenchao and Randy Hodson. “‘Sent Down’ in China: Stratification challenged but not denied.” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 29 (2011): 205-219. 205.
White Haired Girl (ballet). 1964. Accessed March 21, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRr60PByNFc.
Wilkinson, J. Norman. “The White-Haired Girl: From Yangko to Revolutionary Modern Ballet.” Educational Theatre Journal 26 no. 2 (1974): 164-174.
Yang, Dongping and Yiyuan Li. “Naming.” Streetlife China, 165-171. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 166.
Yi, Ding and Jingzhi He. “The White-Haired Girl (An Opera).” Modern Drama from Communist China, 105-180. Translated by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang. New York: New York University Press and London: university of London Press, 1970. 112.
Zhao. Interview by Gloria Liu. In-person formal interview. March 10, 2017.
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Endnotes
[1] Wilkinson, J. Norman. “The White-Haired Girl: From Yangko to Revolutionary Modern Ballet.” Educational Theatre Journal 26 no. 2 (1974): 164-174. 173.
[2] Mittler, Barbara. “Cultural Revolution Model Works and the Politics of Modernization in China: An Analysis of ‘Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy’.” The World of Music 45 no. 2 (2003): 53-81. 54.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] White-Haired Girl (ballet). 1964. Accessed March 21, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRr60PByNFc.
[6] Chan Anita, Richard Madsen, and Jonathan Unger. “A Leftward Lunch and a Solid Footing.” Chen Village: Revolution to Globalization. Berkeley: University of California Press.
[7] Mittler, Barbara. “Cultural Revolution Model Works and the Politics of Modernization in China: An Analysis of ‘Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy’.” The World of Music 45 no. 2 (2003): 53-81. 54.
[8] Clark, Paul. “Elaborating Culture: Dance, Music, Stage, and Fine Arts.” The Chinese Cultural Revolution: A History, 157-202. London: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 163.
[9] Ibid., 164.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Yang, Dongping and Yiyuan Li. “Naming.” Streetlife China, 165-171. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 166.
[12] Yi, Ding and Jingzhi He. “The White-Haired Girl (An Opera).” Modern Drama from Communist China, 105-180. Translated by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang. New York: New York University Press and London: university of London Press, 1970. 112.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Bernstein, Thomas. “Stalinism, famine, and Chinese peasants.” Theory and Society 13, no. 3 (1984): 339-77. 343.
[15] Zhao. Interview by Gloria Liu. In-person formal interview. March 10, 2017.
[16] Qian, Zhenchao and Randy Hodson. “‘Sent Down’ in China: Stratification challenged but not denied.” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 29 (2011): 205-219. 205.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Mao, Zedong. “Serving the People.” Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1966. 290.
[19] Ibid. 312.
[20] Zhao. Interview by Gloria Liu. In-person formal interview. March 10, 2017.
[21] Donald, Stephanie Hemelryk. “Seeing White – Female Whiteness and the Purity of Children in Australian, Chinese and British Visual Culture.” Social Semiotics 10 no. 2 (2000): 157-171. 159.
[22] Cook, Alexander C. “Introduction: The spiritual atom bomb and its global fallout.” In Mao’s Little Red Book: A Global History, 1-22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
[23] Hinton, Carma, Geremie Barme, and Richard Gordon, Morning Sun. DVD. Directed by Carma Hinton, Geremie Barme, and Richard Gordon. 2003.
[24] Chan Anita, Richard Madsen, and Jonathan Unger. “A Leftward Lunch and a Solid Footing.” Chen Village: Revolution to Globalization. Berkeley: University of California Press.
[25] Kraus, Richard Curt Kraus. “Politics in Command.” The Cultural Revolution: A Very Short Introduction, 24-43. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. 32.
[26] Clark, Paul. “Elaborating Culture: Dance, Music, Stage, and Fine Arts.” The Chinese Cultural Revolution: A History, 157-202. London: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 163.
[27] Ibid. 92.
[28] Mao, Zedong. “Women.” Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1966. 297.
[29] Zhao. Interview by Gloria Liu. In-person formal interview. March 10, 2017.
[30] Jin, Yihong. “Rethinking the ‘Iron Girls’: Gender and Labour during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.” Gender & History 18 (2006): 613-634. 614.
[31] Ibid. 617.
[32] Yi, Ding and Jingzhi He. “The White-Haired Girl (An Opera).” Modern Drama from Communist China, 105-180. Translated by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang. New York: New York University Press and London: university of London Press, 1970. 112.
[33] Ibid. 166.
Gloria Liu is a fourth year student at the University of Toronto majoring in East Asian Studies and Sociology.
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