Talk:Down to the Countryside Movement

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I am unaware whose feelings the author of this delicate stub was trying to spare. Chinese experts and Americans alike consider the Cultural Revolution's enormous purges one of the worst things China ever endured. If I have time I will splice in some data from the new (2006) Mao's Last Revolution or Jung Chang's Mao. As is, this stub is like accepting "ethnic cleansing" as a term. Well, we'll all fix it in time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by ProfLd (talk • contribs) 19:14, 6 December 2006

We already have a long article on the Cultural Revolution. This isn't it. There's no soft-pedalling going on here; this article deals with a specific aspect of the Cultural Revolution, whereby students were sent into the countryside to "learn from the peasants". Sure, it was shitty for many of those concerned (e.g. Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl); some other people made the best of it they could (e.g. writer Zhang Chengzhi, who learned to speak Mongolian and published his first poem while in exile), since it beat getting defenestrated by Red Guards. Anyway, the Down to the Countryside Movement wasn't going around creating artificial famines or beating people's parents to death. As I said in the edit history, I'll translate from the Chinese version when I get some time and some motivation. Don't understand your comment about "this stub is like accepting ethnic cleansing as a term" (we've got an article on that too: Ethnic cleansing) cab 21:23, 6 December 2006 (UTC)