Finding China's Lost Generation: The Beijing Fifty-five

Mao Zedong's call for educated urban youth to move to the countryside led to the "Lost Generation" of rusticated youth, who returned to the cities in the late 1970s unprepared for post-Maoist life. However, a group of young Beijingers, the "Beijing Fifty-five," volunteered to carve rubber plantations out of a tropical wilderness and survived the tribulations of the Mao years to help build today's China.

Format: Hardback
Length: 136 pages
Publication date: 15 May 2023
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Mao Zedong's call for educated urban youth to move to the countryside in 1968 resulted in the "Lost Generation" of seventeen million who spent a decade laboring in remote and impoverished regions. Returning to the cities in the late 1970s, they were unprepared to contribute to China's post-Maoist future. However, a group of young Beijingers, known as the "Beijing Fifty-five," volunteered to carve rubber plantations out of a tropical wilderness on China's southwest border a year before the wave of involuntary recruits. Their struggle to survive cultural, political, and physical challenges was typical, and this book shows in dramatic detail how they survived the tribulations of the Mao years to help build today's China.

Weight: 404g
Dimension: 239 x 158 x 15 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781538174241