Dust: A Fantasy Song (Revised Edition)

Author: Ding Xiaohuo
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 of students trained by old schools can be integrated with workers, peasants, and soldiers. Some of them have even invented and created, but they must be guided by the correct line and receive reeducation from workers, peasants, and soldiers to thoroughly transform their old thinking. Such intellectuals are welcomed by workers, peasants, and soldiers. The entire country was in an uproar, and the youth were filled with fervent enthusiasm. "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 spirit of seizing every moment. Some regions held mobilization meetings with tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people, igniting a new wave 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, bringing the cumulative number from 1967 and 1968 to 4.67 million. From then on, the "Old Third Batch" began their decade-long "plowing" in the marshes, meadows, grasslands, loess plateaus, and tropical rainforests of their motherland, composing a dreamlike symphony of tears and songs with their youth, sweat, and even precious lives.