Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village

When reading books, one hopes for either someone who shares the same outlook as you do, so you know you are not alone in your perspective, or on the other hand for a view into a world that is alien to yourself, so you can learn things from a book you are not able to firsthand. Fanshen is a look at a remote village in North-eastern China in the 1940's, which is an experience completely alien to the average reader in an industrialized country. Yet at the same time, the personalities, lives and our shared humanity with the people of Long Bow is the same. The peasants of Long Bow are poor - very poor. Ownership of an animal to help with the farm is considered a luxury. They are so poor that they do not use animals for manure - they use their own privies, the contents of which are highly valued. On top of this is a feudal system where a few own much of the land and do no work, while many of the peasants starve to death and undergo all kinds of trauma. Enter the Eighth Route Army, the political leader of which is Mao Zedong. When the communists enter the picture, the desperate poverty of much of the population is swept away. Landlords can no longer sit in their fine clothes with long fingernails and have others do all work for them - they too must work for a living. Of course, the transition does not go completely smoothly, as the famous Mao quote introducing chapter 14 states: "Revolution is not a dinner party...[it] is an uprising, an act of violence whereby one class overthrows another". Aside from the war with first the Japanese and then Chiang Kai-Shek and his US backers, there are the peasant excesses once the iron fist of the landlords and rich peasants fades away. Also hinted at here there are party excesses, as the party swerves from one position to another and then back again, confusing the peasants (and cadre) of Long Bow. While it's clear a confrontation, that obviously would be violent, was necessary with the landlords, it brings one to wonder what the hierarchical structure of the party would mean over the long term (or even the short term). I have begun reading Hinton's next book on Long Bow, Shenfan, covering the time period from this book to the Cultural Revolution, and he goes into more detail about such things. Nonetheless, this is an inspiring story of how the peasants of China, with a little help from the communist party, helped throw off the yoke of feudalism (as well as Japanese, European and American imperialism) to launch the beginnings of the economic miracle that will probably result in China eventually becoming one of the most important industrial countries in the world.

A sweeping, nuanced, and deeply humane account of the changes in a single village during the land reform process that brought China out of feudalism in the 1940s. Hinton's saga immerses the reader in the shocking, brutal war of each against all that characterized life in rural China in the years before the revolution, and the struggles, challenges, excesses, and corrections that realized the equitable redistribution of agricultural land from the hands of a few landlords to the peasants who tilled it. Eighteen years in the making, the book presents a revolutionary process of rich complexity, constructing a narrative with deep insight and revealing illustration that ranges beyond simple class and economic analysis into questions of organization, family, gender, sexuality, and human frailty, courage, discipline, and altruism. Like the real work of revolution, the long narrative has its slow, grinding parts, but the book is punctuated with many moments of clarity, humor, and human recognition, and rewards the diligent reader immensely. Contrary to the crude and invidious red-baiting review posted by Mr. Collins on this site, Hinton in fact takes great care to examine the violent excesses of the early days of the revolution in the village; indeed the latter half of the book is concerned precisely with the attempts of the community to come to terms with the initial violence and authoritarianism of the Communist Party members and cadres.

This book is a classic and one of the most important accounts of land reform in the 1940s and 50s. The sequel _Shenfan_ is also good, and is also considered a classic in academic circles. Note that even conseravative scholars like Needham praise these books. I'm writing this review mainly in response to reviewer Smallchief's comment that the book is "naive" b/c it paints too positive a picture in light of the "starvation" of "tens of millions" of peasants in the 1950s. I don't want to disrespect Smallchief. Unfortunately this kind of ahistorical hyperbole has become "common knowledge" as the Mao-bashing discourse of narratives like _Wild Swans_ has achieved hegemonic status during the past few years. I say "ahistorical" not because the numbers are wrong (although they do tend to grow over the years--i recently saw the figure 100 million for the number of people that Mao "killed"!), but that they are thrown around outside of historical context, as if you could say anything meaningful about history or about a social system with mere numbers. But if we must play the numbers game, when you talk about starvation (of course it's usually disease the kills people, even in times of famine--"starvation" just has more shock value: we picture Mao selfishly hoarding all the rice from skeletal children), during the most rapid and egalitarian improvement in quality of life in world history, it's necessary to compare statistics of deaths during the Great Leap famine with those prior to the revolution. If you do that, you'll notice that at least as many people died in an average year before the revolution than during the worst year of the famine!(1960)(i'm getting this insight from Brian Turner, who's writing a paper on the subject; Utsa Patnaik says something similar(...). In this light we can see the problem with using any number--whether tens of thousands or tens of millions--to categorically denounce the accomplishment of the Chinese revolution and the social system that the CCP tried to build. As for the later attempt to democratize that system (the Cultural Revolution), and as for the Dengists "reform" or counter-revolution, _Fanshen_ provides a basis on which to understand those events, and Hinton offers a some useful insights into them in his later works: _The Hundred Day War_, _Shenfan_, _The Great Reversal_, and _Through a Glass Darkly_ (still in press). The best general history of the PRC is _Mao's China and After_ by Maurice Meisner.

You've heard the old joke about the guy who says he would rather be a drunk than an alcoholic because alcoholics have to go to all those meetings. That's what this book is about: meetings -- innumerable, endless meetings in a small village in revolutionary China. For three years (1946-1948, it seems that the peasants in this village met every day to discuss how to divvy up the land taken from the landlords, select their leaders, discuss the correct "line" of the revolution, criticize each other, and punish evil doers. Hinton is an enthusiast for Chairman Mao and the communists, but he doesn't gloss over the excesses of the revolution. He paints a vivid picture of life in prerevolutionary China and an equally vivid picture of the implementation of Maoism in the countryside with all its violence, doctrinal hair-splitting, changes in direction, and imperfections. At the end of the book, he concludes that the peasants and the revolution have achieved a proper balance between equity and production in the Chinese countryside and presumably everyone will live happily ever after. As a story about life in the countryside this book is outstanding. As a book about the makings of a revolution at the peasant level it is outstanding. As a book about land reform and Maoism, it is much, much less than prophetic. Hinton leaves us with a warm, post revolutionary feeling that all was well in the Chinese countryside in 1948. But all was not well. Tens of millions of Chinese peasants starved to death in the 1950s. Maybe they were spending too much time in revolutionary meetings and not enough time working in their fields. Revolutionary enthusiasts such as Hinton need to be called to account for the errors they make in their ardor and naivete. Perhaps we should have a meeting on that....

This book is a must read for all of those interested in getting a more in-depth view of the impetus for the revolution in China, namely the absolutely horrific living and working conditions of poor peasants which included years of famine, exploitation by the landlords and barbaric victimization at the hands of the ruling gentry. Also gives an in-depth view of the committment and work of both Communists and non-Communists toward transforming Chinese society and correcting centuries of injustices. Especially if you were raised in America during the McCarthy era you will benefit from reading this book, by balancing the propaganda you have recieved through the media, the education system and rascal politicians your whole life.