For love of their country

By Wang Ru (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-12-11 08:00

Due to his Kuomintang background, Mu Xinya was arrested by the Red Guards at the start of the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) and Mu Hua's stepmother murdered.

Being helpless and homeless, Mu Hua chose to go to the countryside. Along with the 27,000 school students from Beijing, she was sent to Yan'an, where the Chinese Communist Party was based from 1935-48.

On the train, the curious teenagers around Mu were excited about the new life ahead and sang the whole way. She still remembers that all of them were looking forward to seeing the yaodong, a typical cave dwelling which sheltered Chairman Mao Zedong and his soldiers for 13 years.

As soon as they got off the train, the youngsters were divided into groups and sent to villages around Yan'an. An old man on a donkey came to pick up Mu and her colleagues. "We thought it would be a warm welcome but in fact the local farmers didn't like our arrival," she says.

"They had to share their limited food supplies with us. Unable to get enough food from the infertile soil, many poor farmers had to beg."

Every day, the teenage Mu had to get up at 6 am and walk 5 km to the fields where she was working. She had never touched a farming tool in Beijing but was now being told to plough the barren fields with experienced farmers.

"The villagers were simple and very kind to us," she says. "They often said that it was hard for Beijing children coming to a poor area so they treated us like their own children."

She remembers one old man who even left his own children hungry so he could feed the newcomers.

Although Mu left Yan'an just three years later to look after her father, she has always considered her zhiqing time as an experience to treasure.

"One of the characteristics of zhiqing is that we have strong empathy with disadvantaged people and like to help them," she says, "because we used to live and work with poor people and received their help."

Recently, a zhiqing's daughter was seriously ill. As soon as the website posted the story, many zhiqing donated money and offered to help her.

While they may have been lacking the skills needed in their new jobs, zhiqing brought many benefits to rural communities.

Another wheelchair-bound website administrator, Wu Weidong, went to the grasslands in Inner Mongolia in 1968. The first time he tried Mongolian milk tea in the yurt, he almost threw up but 40 years later, Wu, 58, often spends an hour or more travelling just so he can have a cup of the same drink at an Inner Mongolian restaurant in Beijing.

When the "cultural revolution" began, many young people changed their names to show their loyalty to Chairman Mao Zedong and the party. Wu Weidong also changed his name to "Weidong", which means to "protect Mao Zedong".

Wu's zhiqing adventure was at the town of Xiwu Banner 600 km east of Hohhot, the capital of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region. When he arrived at the grassland, he learned how to ride a horse and lived with the herdsmen.

While Wu and his fellow zhiqing learned Mongolian and how to herd, they in turn founded a primary school in Xiwu Banner in 1970 to teach the herdsmen's children. They also taught the locals how to improve sanitation and increase the yield of crops. "The herdsmen cared about us a lot, so we wanted to do something for them as well," says Wu.

Winters in the grassland were extremely cold, especially for outsiders not used to them. By the time Wu's eight years were up, he was paralyzed from the waist down.

But is he bitter? Quite the opposite.

"We are not a lost generation," he insists. "We are a generation who sacrificed our youth for the country.

"If I had 10 minutes to review my whole life before I die, I would like to spend seven minutes going back to my eight years in the grassland as a zhiqing.

"I was lucky to live during that time."

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