Dust (A Ballad for the Sent-down Youth)

Author: Ding Xiaohuo (Compiler)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-03-01
Features: On September 12, 1968, Mao Zedong issued an instruction to all high school graduates across the country: "The majority or most of the students trained by the old schools can integrate with workers, peasants, and soldiers. Some of them even invent and create, but this must be under the correct leadership, and they will be given reeducation by workers, peasants, and soldiers to completely change their old thinking. Such intellectuals are welcomed by workers, peasants, and soldiers." The country was in an uproar, and young students' hearts were filled with excitement. "Go to the countryside, go to the frontier." Revolutionary committees in many places issued notices that night, calling on the masses to strive to be models in implementing Chairman Mao's new instructions with a revolutionary spirit of seizing every moment. In some areas, mobilization meetings with tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people were held, igniting a new high tide of knowledge youth settling in the countryside. Red Guards organizations and high school revolutionary committees in various cities also quickly issued "mobilization orders." Between January and February 1969, within just two months, 1.556 million people settled in the countryside. By the end of the year, a total of 2.6733 million people had gone to the countryside, adding up to 4.67 million by the end of 1967 and 1968. From then on, the "Third Generation of High School Graduates" began their decade-long "cultivation" in the marshes, meadows, grasslands, loess plateaus, and tropical rainforests of their homeland, composing a dreamlike symphony of tears and songs with their youth, sweat, and even precious lives.