"Socialism Is Great!": A Worker's Memoir of the New China

It was on 13 June 2009, while hiking on the Great Wall above the hamlet of Sancha near Huairou north of Beijing, that I met Lijia Zhang. She introduced herself as `Lijia author of Socialism Is Great', and that is how I come to have heard of and read this book. It is a very readable and interesting piece of autobiography, and its readability is largely down to the author's command of English. Normally when `perfect English' is attributed to someone whose first language is not English, there is an implication that we would still know that. Not here. If I had read Socialism Is Great knowing nothing of the author's background I could have believed that she was (somehow) a born Anglophone. In fact she had to struggle, against parental and official opposition, to learn the language, and her success in the matter suggests to me a completely exceptional talent, one she perhaps does not fully recognise in herself. How the book's title relates to the rest of its content is quite an interesting question. The narrative starts in her impoverished family home in Nanjing, and develops through her unfulfilling early experiences as a factory worker. Obviously this is socialism Chinese-style in action, but although Lijia has plenty to say about that I would not say that her angle on it is mainly political. It's more about the inner struggles of an independent-minded spirit confined in a culture of conformity and conservatism. Towards the end of the book we come to the really political bit, but it is brief, it reads almost like a postscript, and it is tantalisingly incomplete. In 1989 Lijia led a demonstration in Nanjing in support of the rebellion in Beijing's Tienanmen Square in that year. We all know the basic story - the central government panicked and instituted a witch-hunt throughout the nation to nail sympathisers with the protests. Lijia was hauled in front of an interrogation panel, and the way she tells it at one moment she was being grilled intensively, and then with one bound she was free, or you might think so. The narrative moves on suddenly to her departure from Nanjing with her husband-to-be, a Scottish student at Oxford, and I wonder what happened in between. What a lot of the book is about is the not particularly political issue of a young woman's early initiation into men, love and sex, and the particularly sharp series of lessons she got in the fact that the second and third of those items do not always move in lockstep with each other. Whether it is the story itself, or the way it is told, or both, I found this tale far more interesting than I normally find such stuff. It all seems completely sincere, there is no real recrimination, and there is even some delightful humour - I loved the advertisements intended to attract suitors to unmarried and ageing virgins, such as ownership of or at least access to a flush toilet. I can well understand how the iron entered into her soul after her experiences, and I notice that her marriage has not las

I have met Lijia Zhang by a chance encounter as we shared the same row seat on a recent trans Pacific flight. At the onset of our casual conversation, I was impressed by her command of the English language, quite uncharacteristic of a native Chinese. I naively asked, "where did you learn to speak such good English?" She modestly replied that she is a writer, just having returned from a US book tour promoting her newly released "Socialism is Great!" and proudly handed me a fresh copy. Then, for the next 12 hours I was practically glued to the book, discovering the answer to my original question, and learning much more... "Socialism is Great!" is an autobiography spanning a 10 year period of Ms Zhang's young adult life centering in China's ancient capital of Nanjing. On a surface level, it is a story about Lijia, a free spirited young woman coming of age. The book's plot skillfully meanders around both her home life, dominated by a strong mother, and her work place, a munitions factory, whose 'danwei' system keeps her shackled to a monotonous job while denying her the higher education which she desperately seeks. Lijia's heart is fragile, first broken by a handsome young intellectual called Red Rock, and then hurt once more by an older married man. In disillusionment, she spirals down to a series of loveless affairs and one night stands. Unlike her heart, Lijia has a tough skin, and against all obstacles she single-mindedly pursues a dream to better her education, to study and perfect her English (she even hides to study in the factory's garbage dump - the only place to provide her privacy), so she can free herself of her factory confinement and become a journalist. On another, and more significant level, the book's plot unravels against a backdrop that vividly portrays the dawn days of modern China, a post Mao Zedong's era of the 1980's, in a period when the tornado of the Cultural Revolution has dissipated, yet its dust has not quite settled. This is a time of great change, as the Communist system shifts toward market economy. Individuals become entrepreneurial, while government controlled factories find creative ways of competing in a free market. (In an ironical example, Lijia's munitions factory produces a huge bronze statue of Buddha). Many shed their old garbs to mimic Western styles and anything American (as does Lijia to her old cadres' displeasure). Others are out rightly challenging the limits of the new government. The book kept me captivated as I was anxious to learn at every step how the bravely tenacious young woman was going to 'make it' out of the factory. Every page is sprinkled with colorful metaphors, perhaps influenced by ancient Chinese proverbs. The author's mastery of the English prose brings to mind another non-native English writer from another century - Joseph Conrad. I find the book to be quite informative and recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about Chinese history and its culture. When finished r

Lijia Zhang is an autodictat that worked her way up from poverty and the factory floor. Aged sixteen and a promising student she was denied a place at University because of her father's 'political problems'. Consequently she was pulled out of school by her mother, to replace her when she took early retirement from her job on the acid pickling line at the Ministry of Aerospace's Liming Machinery Factory. Liming in Nanjing was responsible for the development and production of China's Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. Not that that mattered to Lijia stuck in the overmanned and underworked Work Unit Number Twenty Three, the gauge testing department. Desperate to escape her 'iron rice bowl' job for life and a Stakhanovite by nature and training she signed up for the new TV University. She passed with flying colours, but was denied the expected promotion because of 'political problems' again. This only made her more of a rebel. 'Socialism is Great!' follows her revolt in fashion, ideas and action. With the help of a series of male mentors/lovers she adopted colourful western dress, Nietzsche, Kafka and the much frowned on Misty Poetry, who sense of ennui certainly was not designed to motivate the masses. Then English was to become the key to escape. Lijia took up the language as if her life depended on it. In some senses it did. English was learnt playing truant from her work in the malodorous surroundings of the factory waste dump as in her private life men came, betrayed and went. One leaving her with the gift of an illegal abortion. As Liming arms were turned into ploughshares as the winds of change and the new drive for profit saw the factory win a bid to cast a giant bronze Buddha. By 1989 she was one of the leading organisers of the largest demonstration of Nanjing workers in support of the democracy movement in Tiananmen Square. The book finishes as, post-Tiananmen, the Public Security Bureau take her in for questioning. Zhang's 'Socialism is Great!' lifts with its endurance, stoicism and joy. Zhang leaves you wanting more!

The human spirit is like a hardy perennial that can flourish in even the most inhospitable of soil. Lijia Zhang is a magnificent example of that. The odds were that Lijia Zhang, the daughter of factory workers, would end up in the factory herself in the China of the 1980's. And that is exactly what happened, initially. In 1980, just four years after the death of Mao, a time of some upheaval in China, the sixteen-year-old was packed off to take her mother's place in a state-owned missile factory in Nanjing. It was, by her family's standards, a good job in harsh economic times, and that should have been the end of the story. But Zhang was an unusually bright student who had ambitions to become a journalist. The story of how she journeyed from a decade as an obedient factory girl to writer, sexual being and political activist in an ever-changing China makes for fascinating, compelling reading. Zhang's form of rebellion first manifested itself in wearing bright clothes and studying English. It later led her to sexual experimentation, at the risk of being labeled a "fairy fox", a seductive woman. Her choice of men may not have always been wise, but she professes herself grateful for what she learned from each encounter, as any true romantic does. Socialism is Great! ends as Lijia Zhang gets in serious trouble by organizing demonstrations of Nanjing workers in support of the Tiananmen Square Protest in 1989. She wriggled out of that one, and fled to England with her Scottish boyfriend, whom she married. Three years later, they returned to China. Zhang, who has two daughters and is divorced, now writes for international publications and contributes to BBC Radio and NPR.

Zhang Lizia tells a "coming of age" story in 1980's Nanjing, China. Her story traces in intimate detail the agony of being pulled out of school at age 16 by her mother in order to work in a intellectually stultifying and demoralizing missile factory - theoretically for life. Unable to accept this fate, Lizia dreams one day of becoming a journalist, attaining a proper University education, and breaking free of the shackles of mind-numbing socialist repression. The working title of the book was "Frog in a Well," signifying the depth of despair of walls closing in on her, without any obvious way out. After ten years of setbacks and more setbacks, Lizia was able to teach herself English by countless hours of self and group study and reading English novels like "Jane Eyre" behind the pages of the Communist "People's Daily" newspaper as co-workers laughed and mocked her. Fighting to maintain her integrity and desire for self-expression at all costs, Lizia's story is a living testament that the human condition which dares to dream cannot be denied, even in a country that stresses collective thinking only. Writing in her self taught non-native language, her style is emotional, beautiful, sad, and humorous, all in one. The book focuses mostly on her personal life - family, friends, lovers, and the beautiful "old" Nanjing, and less on politics as described in countless other memoirs of post Cultural Revolution families. Lizia writes with grace and determination and concludes the story risking her future by standing up to the authorities as she leads factory workers in demonstrations supporting the Beijing democracy movement of 1989. This book is not to be missed - you will laugh and cry at each turn of the page.