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China Elevator Stories
Up To The Mountains And Down To The Countryside – My Chinese Mother-In-Law, The Educated Youth
In July 1975, my Chinese mother-in-law is sent to the countryside as part of the “Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside” movement during the Cultural Revolution.
22/03/2014
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
My Chinese mother-in-law, who is from Siping in Jilin province, is sent to the Chinese countryside in 1975.
She is one of many young adults referred to as educated youth (知识青年). Although she didn’t attend university, having a high school education is enough to qualify as educated youth. She isn’t the first educated youth to arrive in the village where she is sent. By 1975, the longest-staying educated youth in the village had already been there for nine years.
Every morning, between 3:30 and 4:30 a.m., loudspeakers installed at the main door of every house wake up the villagers, signaling it’s time to prepare for work. They have no machines. The only tools available are simple scythes and their bare hands.
In Austria today, fieldwork usually doesn’t happen in winter. But when my mother-in-law is sent to China’s countryside at age 20, things are different. Corn is harvested from the fields in autumn, but because there’s so much fieldwork to complete before the start of Northeast China’s long and bitter winters, harvesting corn stalks is postponed until winter. Even with snow on the ground, the villagers—including the educated youth—continue working in the fields. My mother-in-law’s hands become cracked and wounded, but she remains determined to keep going.
My mother-in-law is luckier than one of the other educated youth in her village. There is a young man from Shanghai who, one winter day, is pulling a heavy cart loaded with the harvest. The icy road causes him to slip, and the cart slides out of control, crushing him beneath its wheels.
At age 23, after 39 months of living and performing grueling labor in the countryside, my mother-in-law is finally allowed to return to the city. Three years later, she marries my father-in-law, a Chinese man from Northeast China.
Have you ever met anyone who was sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution?