A girl goes to work in the countryside during the chinese cultural revolution (1966–78)

Abstract

Abstract This article is an account of the personal experience of a Chinese woman on an army reclamation farm in the far west of China from 1966 to 1978, during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Although it is a description of this experience, it may also provide a perspective for understanding this special period of modern Chinese history and the ‘down to the countryside movement’ that involved tens of millions of urban young people and their families; consideration is also given to the consequences of the movement upon women of the author's generation, and on gender relations of that period