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To each according—oh, never mind
“SOCIALISM IS GREAT!”
By Lijia Zhang
384 pp. Anchor Books $15
Reviewed by Mike Marcoe
“Socialism is great!” The cry went out from the teeming masses of workers in industrial China. It’s also the title of this very human book about coming of age in China in the 1980s, just when communism was beginning its awkward movement toward reform.
The title is sarcasm—a way to give the appearance of loving socialism even while “the colorful trash of capitalism was creeping into China’s gray kingdom,” as author Lijia Zhang—also sarcastic—points out.
Much like the appeal of sex, which every Chinese seemed to want but dared not admit, this kind of schizophrenic thinking one had to master in order to navigate this big transition. Lijia’s story occurs in the 1980s in the city of Nanjing as China’s authoritarian regime was losing its ability to control the Chinese, and the new, more optimistic capitalism was emerging in the cracks where socialism failed.
Because of her father’s politically suspect status, Lijia is denied a university education, a denial she feels painfully. Instead, her mother gets her a job in a quiet room in the Liming Machinery Factory making missiles and thus contributing to “The Glorious Cause” of a greater China.
It’s a world that is filled with loudspeakers broadcasting the ideals of the socialist revolution:
[Announcers] told moving stories of model workers like Master Wang, socialist-minded and professionally proficient, who continued to operate his turning machine despite serious illness. Loudspeakers were the most widespread propaganda tool the Chinese Communists used, installed in every factory, school, village, neighborhood committee hall, and army camp—even in moving trains and aboard ships.”
Inside her small room with her coworkers, socialist respectability is not upheld by devoted workers, losing out to stories of sex scandals, personal exploits, and lots of BS’ing. During her generous amounts of downtime, Lijia soon takes up the new TV University, then gets hold of books and begins her introduction to the seductive world of western decadence.
What else is a bold young woman to do when not reading forbidden western novels? Discover sex, of course. Chapter after chapter of the book’s middle is devoted to uncovering the mysteries of men, sex, and relationships. Not bodice-ripper style, but more like awkward-teenager-fumbling-around-nervously style. She takes us through a few relationships, some forbidden or frowned upon, but all revealing what it means to be Chinese at this turning point in China’s history.
A bold, inquisitive young woman, she is determined not to fall prey to the bitterness of a wasted life. Reading western novels enables her to learn English. Her willingness to challenge authority and speak her mind earns her demerits and public humiliation. But she perseveres, leaving the factory ten years later and going on to college in England, becoming a professional author, journalist, and commentator.
Lijia’s story of the gray background of industry, working, and communism describes a world where the only reason people join the Communist Party anymore was to advance their careers and become comfortable in life. Maintaining socialism meant additional humiliations, for example, having to submit to the “period police” to prove she isn’t pregnant.
All of this seems a little tame compared to the sham trials, torture, and execution that the previous generation had to endure. We the readers are treated to many examples of older folks who did not have this luxury of being merely bored by communist oppression; it’s scarred upon their hearts. For Lijia’s generation, it’s less a matter of torture and death and more about slow soul-death by ludicrous irony. Although this is the backdrop of her story, it is certainly not her life.
Her story ends in 1989, when she’s in trouble with the law for organizing a demonstration in Nanjing to support the larger one in Tiananmen Square. We see her adding her fingerprint to a police report after an interrogation. It seems quite mild compared to what Mao might have ordered up just twenty years earlier, but it still holds enough fear to remind her that she is not living in a free China. Giving only as many details to her interrogators as she was willing, she ends the scene with the words, “[I] held my head up, and my back straight and erect. Just like my mother.” Strong to the very end.
The book is not an analysis of socialist doctrine. Instead, it is content to let Chinese socialism stumble about from its own incompetence during its exit from history. The book is peppered evenly with strange Chinese idioms and literary descriptions (including many about flatulence), and it adds minute detail to nearly everything she experiences, sometimes to the point of feeling oppressive.
Lijia Zhang’s story is one testament among many that human fulfillment comes in spite of the government’s best efforts to provide it. Zhang eventually returned to China, where she lives in Beijing with two daughters, and works as a writer and freelance journalist.
Socialism Is Great! is a deeply felt story of a sensitive young writer wriggling her way out of what could have been cradle-to-grave security, with the one thing she is not supposed to have—an unquenchable thirst for learning everything.
Adversity does indeed build up the spirit. It also gives us gems like this one. To those westerners who are tempted to see communist citizens as soulless automatons who do not ache to feel truly human, this memoir will prove that our comrades are, indeed, just like us.
Mike Marcoe is a writer and editor from Middleton, Wisconsin. He specializes in writing personal finance articles and editing scholarly books. He has published over 100 articles, a book on anxiety disorders, and a book of short stories. He has also worked as a chef and a business manager. In his day job, he is the director of content development for the Educated Investor. When not working, he plays a variety of ethnic flutes, cooks vegetarian cuisine, and writes fiction. His Website is http://www.mikemarcoe.com.
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