Heroes of China's great leap forward : two stories / edited by Richard King.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

King, Richard, 1951 February 5-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Chinese fiction--20th century--Translations into English.

Chinese fiction.

China--History--1949-1976--Fiction.

China.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (128 p.)

Place of Publication:

Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, c2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Heroes of China's Great Leap Forward presents contrasting narratives of the most ambitious and disastrous mass movement in modern Chinese history. The objective of the Great Leap, when it was launched in the late 1950s, was to catapult China into the ranks of the great military and industrial powers with no assistance from the outside world; it resulted in a famine that killed tens of millions of the nation's peasants.Li Zhun's "A Brief Biography of Li Shuangshuang," written while the movement was underway, celebrates the Great Leap as it was supposed to be: a time of optimism, dynamism, and shared purpose. A spirited young peasant woman, freed from the restrictions of home life, launches a canteen and wins the recognition of authorities and the admiration of her husband. The story-and the film that followed it-made Li Shuangshuang the greatest fictional heroine of the Great Leap. In contrast, Zhang Yigong's short novel The Story of the Criminal Li Tongzhong, written two decades later, was one of the first works published in China to suggest a much darker side to the Great Leap. A village official leads a raid on a state granary to feed starving peasants; he is later arrested and dies a criminal. Although Zhang stopped short of portraying the horrors of famine, his tone of moral outrage provides a rejoinder to the triumphalism of "Li Shuangshuang."The stories are accompanied by an introduction to the Great Leap and portraits of the two writers, including their recollections of that traumatic time and the creation of their very different heroes.

Contents:

Introduction

A brief biography of Li Shuangshuang / Li Zhun ; translated by Johanna Hood and Robert Mackie with Richard King

The story of the criminal Li Tongzhong / Zhang Yigong ; translated by John Shook, Carmen So, and Aaron Ward, with Richard King.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 28. Aug 2019)

Contains:

Li, Zhun, 1928-2000. Li Shuangshuang xiao zhuan. English

Zhang, Yigong. Fan ren Li Tongzhong de gu shi. English.

Brief biography of Li Shuangshuang.

Story of the criminal Li Tongzhong.

ISBN:

9780824837594

0824837592

9781441671509

1441671501

OCLC:

663885752