China books Christmas calendar (21)

Today we present a book from 1974, Inside a People’s Commune: report from Chiliying, a pure propaganda product from Foreign Languages Press in Beijing. Qiliying 七里营 (Chiliying in Wade-Giles transcription) was a commune 公社 from 1958 to 1983, and is today a town in Xinxiang county 新乡县, under Xinxiang City 新乡市, a prefecture-level city in Henan province 河南省. It is actually an interesting historical site as the Battle of Muye 牧野之战 took place somewhere in the vicinity in the year 1046 BCE, almost 3000 years ago. Mao Zedong made a personal visit to this commune in 1958, and Qiliying must have been a ”model” commune that was shown to visitors. Not only this book, quite typical for the period, but also educational material by e.g. Education Resources Information Center from 1979 (sponsored by the US Department of Education) specifically mentions Qiliying.

The images in the book give the impression that people were happy in Qiliying in 1974, cotton yield per mu 亩 (≈666 ㎡) was six-fold from before 1949, and everything was going forward. However, the ”Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius” campaign 批林批孔运动 was raging through the country, and the Gang of Four 四人帮 with Jiang Qing 江青 were in control with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai both in bad health. Still we learn from the flap text ”how the Communist Part of China leads her peasants forward in conformity with Chairman Mao Tsetung’s revolutionary line, and how socialist ideas take ever deeper root in countless hearts and minds”. It is unclear if ”her” in the sentence just quoted alludes to all peasants or just the ones in Qiliying commune.

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