Yang Jiang: "The First Time I was 'Sent Down'"

Yang Jiang, right around the time I suppose she first wrote this essay

Publishing History: TBA

Basically, this is a really characteristic reminiscence piece that gives short portraits of people Yang Jiang encountered during the year 1958, which she spent laboring in a small mountain village.

Much more to come as I type up my notes. This is going to be one of the central texts of my dissertation, and I will translate it fully after I sketch out the exposition I want to give.

Sketch of the exposition:


Having read some of her other pieces, this piece is a nice display of some of the major themes and motifs that Yang Jiang often works with. It shows that she may not have a very broad range in her elder years, but she thinks through carefully, on a scale that shows the large in the small, about the need for intimacy, family life, stability, and empathy for other people's ways of living. She emphasizes basic respect for the individual that extends to the sick and the poor. And she implies more strongly than ever that the CCPs policies were somewhat problematic, but overall had correct intentions. She is no anti-Communist. She is the kind of craftsman who prefers to look, listen, receive, and then respond with a non-linear combination of the disparate sources of her perceptions.