A. Plan of Investigation
The purpose of this study is to answer the question: To what extent did Chinese leaders display their power through the controlling of sex in the Chinese Cultural Revolution? This can give historians a better understanding of the extent to which the Chinese leaders controlled every aspect of the Chinese people's life. This is a fairly new subject because, as I will discuss later in the project, sex was silenced in the Cultural Revolution.
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| B. Summary of Evidence
The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) was a time of great social change for the nation of China. In the words of Premier Zhou Enlai, the Revolution “defeated the arrogance of the reactionary bourgeoisie and...broke old ideas, customs and habits of the exploiting classes, fostered new ideas, culture, customs and habits of the proletariat, and vigorously promoted the revolutionization of people’s minds.”
The state controlled sex through the different treatments of the people in rural settings and those in urban settings: loose in the former and strict in the latter. The urban areas were filled with the bourgeoisie and the rural with the “sent-down youth,” teenagers who were “sent to labor in the fields to reform their thinking.” “Life in the countryside was punctuated by flirtation and sex.” Sex was an abomination in the urban settings because it was seen as “being equated with being cheap, and bourgeois, with promiscuity; [violators] are unrevolutionary, not worthy of brave hearts that should be beating with thoughts of building a new socialist nation.” Chinese people were called to “maintain the honor and reputation of the country” by “remain[ing] pure.” Sex was no longer a personal business; it was a matter of conc...
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...a: Alive in the Bitter Sea. New York: Times Books, 1982.
Chesneaux, Jean. China: The People’s Republic, 1946-1976. Translated by Paul Auster and Lydia Davis. New York: Pantheon, 1979.
Diamant, Neil Jeffrey. Revolutionizing the Family: Politics, Love, and Divorce in Urban and Rural China, 1946-1968. London, England: University of California Press, Ltd., 2000.
Honig, Emily. “Socialist Sex: The Cultural Revolution Revisited.” Modern China 29, no. 2 (April 2003): 143-175. http://lnks.jstor.org/sici?sici=0097-7004%28200304%2929%3A2%3C143%3ASSTCRR%3E2.0.CO%3BR2-3 (accessed April 3, 2008).
Pan, Lynn. The New Chinese Revolution. Chicago, IL: Contemporary Books, 1988.
Zhou, Enlai. Speeh, September 30, 1966. Premier Zhou Enlai’s Speech at the National Day Reception. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/zhou-enlai/1966/09/30.htm (accessed January 28, 2010).
William Hinton, a US born member of a Chinese Communist land reform task force in 1948, noted that the peasants were challenging the landlords and money lenders in regards to overcharges and restoration of lands and property seized in default of debts (Doc 4). This was due to the newly found confidence in themselves through the defeat of the Japanese. Although Hinton was born into the communist party, his recount of the actions he saw concerning the peasants was simply from a look from the outside in. He personally did not experience this sudden upsurge of challenges, which gives the public a view of what the communist party thought of what looked like a move towards social equality. Although Hinton’s recount may not have been thoroughly verified, the communist party did indeed aid in fueling what was known as a struggle meeting, where Chinese peasants humiliated and tortured landlords, as seen in the picture, organized by the Communist Party as part of the land reform process, of a group of peasants at a meeting where in the center a woman is with her former landlord (Doc 7). Alongside the destruction of the landowning infrastructure that was previously followed, the Communist party also aided the peasants in a form of social reform. One important law that granted specifically women more freedom in their social life was the creation of the Marriage Law of the People’s Republic of China in 1950, where it states that the “supremacy of man over woman, and in disregard of the interest of the children, is abolished” (Doc 5). The newly introduced concepts of free choice in partners, abortion, and monogamy that derived from this law changed the societal position on women and peasants which greatly expresses the amount of new social mobility
Schoenhals, Michael. China's Cultural Revolution, 1966-1969: Not a Dinner Party. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996. Print.
In the Chinese history there is an important date that many remember. That is the Cultural Revolution that started in 1966 (Chan 103). This Cultural Revolution wasn’t a war by any means, but a competition between the different factions of the communist party for power. The Cultural Revolution was also a very important event in the history of the Chen Village. We saw through the different chapters of Chen Village just how it affected the different people that were living there during the eleven year span that it lasted (Chan 103). The Cultural Revolution caused a lot of problems to stir up in Chen Village.
The Cultural Revolution in China was led by Mao Zedong, due to this Liang and many others faced overwhelming obstacles in many aspects of their life such as work, family and everyday encounters, if affected everyone’s families life and education, Liang lets us experience his everyday struggles during this era, where the government determined almost every aspect of life.
In a village left behind as the rest of the China is progressing, the fate of women remains in the hands of men. Old customs and traditions reign supreme, not because it is believed such ways of life are best, but rather because they have worked for many years despite harsh conditions. In response to Brother Gu’s suggestion of joining communist South China’s progress, Cuiqiao’s widower father put it best: “Farmer’s have their own rules.”
Li, K., & Mengyan, F. (2013). A historical survey on modernization of Chinese culture. Asian Social Science, 9(4), 129-132. doi:10.5539/ass.v9n4p129
Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party, a historical fiction book written by Ying Chang Compestine, exceptionally portrays the horrors and torture the Chinese people endured during the "revolution," or the Communist control and building of a new China.
Zhu Ying was a member of the military’s theatre troupe, and about to be a member of the party, until she refused to sleep with party members. After that, they transferred and then imprisoned her. While her role in the military could have made Zhu Ying an androgynous figure, an emblem of communist gender equality, the party’s expectation that she have sex with party members makes her a sexual object, which is its own form of feminization. Zhu Ying is allowed to retain her femininity only if she consents to being a sexual object; when she does not, she is sent to be a laborer, and later imprisoned. Moreover, by being separated from her boyfriend, her chance at domestic happiness is taken away. After imprisonment, she has no opportunity to fill the traditional female role of marriage and children (which she may or may not have desired). Thus, the party halts the “natural” order of marriage and
Parascandola, Louis J. “Love and sex in a totalitarian society: an exploration of Ha Jin and
They are not typically sexualized, and are often thought of as “’not quite real men’ because they fail the (Western) test of masculinity” (Louie 9). Unlike the typical Western macho man, Chinese men often do not have facial hair, have very soft and delicate looking skin, slim bodies, and tend to appear very young. These qualities can relate to more of the female characteristics exhibited in many other cultures. Perhaps a reason why Chinese men tend to be softer looking is “a result and an indication of sophisticated cultural tastes in art and literature” (Law 41). This can be tied back to the traditional wen-wu masculinity of how being scholarly and well educated was highly valued. Being sexualized has never been a very prominent factor within the Chinese masculinity. The highly respected quality of having excellent self-control reiterates to men that they should control their sexual desires and urges. It once again is the very opposite of the Western idea that men cannot control themselves, and that women have to always be on the defense as a result. To exhibit that one could have the most self-control, there was the concept that during sex it was often considered a “battle with the ultimate goal being the ability to withhold an orgasm while making the other partner orgasm” (Law 7). Chinese masculinity and integrity focused more on the ability to control sexual desires rather than the person one was having sex with. This can account how up until recent times, it did not matter all that much whether or not a person was in a homosexual relationship. Nowadays, however, homosexuality is not widely accepted in China. It can be determined from all this, that masculinity lies in the capability to control oneself rather than being blatantly sexually
Fairbank, John King. The Great Chinese Revolution 1800-1985. New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1986.
The early part of the novel shows women’s place in Chinese culture. Women had no say or position in society. They were viewed as objects, and were used as concubines and treated with disparagement in society. The status of women’s social rank in the 20th century in China is a definite positive change. As the development of Communism continued, women were allowed to be involved in not only protests, but attended universities and more opportunities outside “house” work. Communism established gender equality and legimated free marriage, instead of concunbinage. Mao’s slogan, “Women hold half of the sky”, became extremely popular. Women did almost any job a man performed. Women were victims by being compared to objects and treated as sex slaves. This was compared to the human acts right, because it was an issue of inhumane treatment.
According to Stevens (2003), two female figures, namely the New Women and the Modern Girl, appeared in Republican China as the gender-specific images in the reformation of Chinese women. While the New Women represents a positive view towards modernity who is therefore the primal figure in the modern nation project, her counterpart the Modern Girl is in deep anxieties and confusions of forming a woman’s subjectivity. As the Modern Girl begins to gain an increasing importance in recent research, she becomes a revealing and insightful figure in terms of the Chinese women’s gender roles in change (Hershatter, 2007; Yen, 2005; Stevens, 2003; Shih, 2001). Stevens (2003: 83) offers a succinct depiction of her:
Gittings, John. The Changing Face of China: From Mao to market. Oxford University Press, 2005.
Examples of cultural constructions can be seen throughout history in several forms such as gender, relationships, and marriage. “Cultural construction of gender emphasizes that different cultures have distinctive ideas about males and females and use these ideas to define manhood/masculinity and womanhood/femininity.” (Humanity, 239) In many cultures gender roles are a great way to gain an understanding of just how different the construction of gender can be amongst individual cultures. The video The Women’s Kingdom provides an example of an uncommon gender role, which is seen in the Wujiao Village where the Mosuo women are the last matriarchy in the country and have been around for over one thousand years. Unlike other rural Chinese villages where many girls are degraded and abandoned at birth, Mosuo woman are proud and run the households where the men simply assist in what they need. The view of gender as a cultural construct ...