A01=Claire Anne Chik
A01=Liyi He
Author_Claire Anne Chik
Author_Liyi He
autobiographical account rural China
Bai ethnic minority
bamboo
Bamboo Basket
basket
Biggest Pig
Bosom Friends
Brigade Leader
Category=DNBM1
Category=JPVR
Category=NHF
China's Son
Chinese Communist Party
Claire Anne Chik
county
County's Middle School
Cultural Revolution impact
Dali Town
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Fourth Brigade
Handmade Shoes
He Liyi
head
Household Sideline Productions
jianchuan
Jianchuan County
Junior Middle School
Labor Reform Farm
Land Reform Movement
normal
peasant survival strategies
political persecution China
production
reeducation through labor
rural Chinese history
team
Team Head
Top Secret
village
Village Production Team
Willow Tree
Work Point Recorder
Work Points
Young Apple Tree
Young Man
Young Pine Trees
yunnan
Yunnan Normal University
Product details
- ISBN 9780813339795
- Weight: 640g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 31 Jul 2002
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Inc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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He Liyi belongs to one of China's minorities, the Bai, and he lives in a remote area of northwestern Yunnan Province. In 1979 his wife sold her fattest pig to buy him a shortwave radio. He spent every spare moment listening to the BBC and VOA in order to improve the English he had learned at college between 1950 and 1953. For "further practice," he decided to write down his life story in English. Humorous and unfiltered by translation, his autobiography is direct and personal, full of richly descriptive images and phrases from his native Bai language. At the time of He Liyi's graduation, English was being vilified as the language of the imperialists, so the job he was assigned had nothing to do with his education. In 1958 he was labeled a rightist and sent to a "reeducation-through-labor farm." Spirited away by truck on the eve of his marriage, Mr. He spent years in the labor camp, where he schemed to garner favor from the authorities, who nevertheless shamed him publicly and told him that all his problems "belong to contradictions between the people and the enemy." After his release in 1962, the talented Mr. He had no choice but to return to his native village as a peasant. His stratagems for survival, which included stealing "nightsoil" from public toilets and extracting peach-pit oil from thousands of peaches, personify the peasant's universal struggle to endure during those difficult years. He Liyi's autobiography recounts nearly all the major events of China's recent history, including the Japanese occupation, the Communist victory over the Nationalists in 1949, Mao's disastrous Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, the experience of the labor camps, and changes brought about by China's dramatic re-opening to the world since Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1978, No other book so poignantly reveals the travails of the common person and village life under China's tempestuous Communist government, which He Liyi ironically refers to as "Mr. China." Yet he describes his saga of poverty and hardship with humor and a surprising lack of bitterness. And rarely has there been such an intimate, frank view of how a Chinese man thinks and feels about personal relationships, revealed in dialogue and letters to his two wives. He Liyi's autobiography stands as perhaps the most readable and authentic account available in English of life in rural China. He Liyi's previous book is The Spring of Butterflies (London and New York, 1985), a translation of Chinese folk tales.
He Liyi's previous book is The Spring of Butterflies, a translation of Chinese folk tales. Claire Anne Chik is currently teaching English as a Second Language at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has taught English at Kumming Institute of Technology and Yunnan University from 1983 to 1986. He Liyi's previous book is The Spring of Butterflies, a translation of Chinese folk tales. Claire Anne Chik is currently teaching English as a Second Language at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has taught English at Kumming Institute of Technology and Yunnan University from 1983 to 1986.
