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Abstract
In breaking the dividing line of 1949, this paper provides a historical account of the speaking-bitterness movement in the countryside and in the People’s Liberation Army from the 1940s through the 1950s. It demonstrates the Party’s motivations, techniques, and effects in organizing and controlling the speaking-bitterness movement as a campaign of political education and ideological transformation. The paper argues that when confronted with widespread, passive resistance and skepticism of the Communist revolution, the Party used speaking bitterness to mobilize poor peasants to participate in Land Reform, and to join the People’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA). PLA soldiers also went through speaking bitterness as an important step of politicization. Speaking bitterness became a significant political ritual of self-education and mutual education. It successfully turned an individual’s experience of trauma and suffering into collective experience, and cut across the traditional identities of lineage and neighborhood.
Acknowledgment
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for the insightful comments, and thank the Academic Support Committee of Allegheny College for assistance in research of this project.
Notes
1 Chen Beiou, Renmin xuexi cidian (Dictionary of people’s learning) (Shanghai: Guangyi shuju, 1952), 331. One article focusing on “speaking bitterness” is Charlene Makley, “‘Speaking Bitterness’: Autobiography, History and Mnemonic Politics on Sino-Tibetan Frontier,” Comparative Studies in Society, vol. 47, no. 1 (January 2005): 40–78.
2 David E. Aptor and Tony Saich, Revolutionary Discourse in Mao’s Republic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 70.
3 For the mobilization purposes of speaking bitterness, see Li Lifeng, “Tugai zhong de suku: yizhong minzhong dongyuan jishu de weiguan fenxi (Speaking bitterness in Land Reform: A microanalysis of a technique of mass mobilization),” Nanjing daxue xuebao (Journal of Nanjing University), no. 5 (October 2007): 97–109.
4 Jin Chongji, Zhuanzhe niandai: Zhongguo de 1947 nian (The Year of Turning: The 1947 of China) (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2002), 380.
5 During the Civil War, there was “no distinction between the military and non-military.” See Ying-Mao Kau, The People’s Liberation Army and China’s Nation-building (White Plains, NY: International Arts and Sciences Press, INC, 1973), xxvii–xxviii.
6 See Arif Dirlik, “Modernism and Antimodernism in Mao Zedong’s Marxism,” in Arif Dirlik et al., eds., Critical Perspectives on Mao Zedong’s Thought (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1997), 59–83. Also see Dirlik, “Modernity as History: Post-Revolutionary China, Globalization and the Question of Modernity”, Social History, vol. 27, no. 1 (January 2002): 16–39.
7 For the urban-based studies of Chinese modernity, see Wen-Hsin Yeh, Becoming Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). David Strand notices that modernity means not only a cosmopolitan way of life but the state’s organizational power and technology of control. See Yeh, “Introduction,” in Becoming Chinese, 9.
8 Du Runsheng, “Dangqian tudi gaige zhidao zhong de jige wenti (Several questions in guiding the Land Reform work in current time),” in Zhongnan junzheng weiyuanhui tudi gaige weiyuanhui (The Land Reform Committee of the Central-Southern Military and Political Commission), ed., Tudi gaige zhongyao wenxian yu jingyan huibian (Compiled important documents and experiences of Land Reform) (1951), 349.
9 Wang Youming, Jiefangqu tudi gaige yanjiu: 1941–1948: yi Shandong lunan wei gean (A study of Land Reform in liberated areas) (Shanghai: Shanghai shehui kexueyuan chubanshe, 2006), 109–11.
10 See Philip Huang, “Rural Class Struggle in the Chinese Revolution: Representational and Objective Realities from the Land Reform to the Cultural Revolution,” Modern China, vol. 21, no. 1 (January 1995): 109.
11 Godwin C. Chu, “Communication and Cultural Change in China: A Conceptual Framework,” in Godwin C. Chu and Francis L.K. Hsu, eds., Moving a Mountain: Cultural Change in China (Honolulu: The East-West Center, University of Hawaii, 1979), 13–14.
12 Du Runsheng, “Dangqian tudi gaige zhidao zhong de jige wenti,” in Tudi gaige zhongyao wenxian yu jingyan huibian, 352.
13 “Zhonggong zhongyang zhongnanju guanyu fangshou fadong qunzhong chedi wancheng tudi gaige jihua de zhishi (The directive of the Central China Bureau of the CCP Central regarding thoroughly mobilizing the masses and completing Land Reform),” Tudi gaige zhongyao wenxian yu jingyan huibian, 375.
14 Jiayan Zhang, “Who Owned More Land? Reappraising Land Ownership in Pre-1949 China—A Case Study of the Jianghan Plain,” The Chinese Historical Review, vol. 16, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 184, 202.
15 Liang Shu-ming, Zhongguo wenhua yaoyi (Essence of Chinese culture) (Shanghai: shiji chuban jituan, 2005), 130–31.
16 Edward Friedman, Paul G. Pickowicz, and Mark Selden, Chinese Village, Socialist State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 86.
17 Huaiyin Li, Village China under Socialism and Reform: A Micro-History, 1948–2008 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 16.
18 Qu Guiping, Huabei xiangcun minzhong: shiye zhong de shehui fenceng jiqi biandong (Rural people in northern Chinese villages: Social stratification and its change in perspective) (Beijing: renmin chubanshe, 2011), 168.
19 Ibid., 168.
20 Xie Youtian, Xiangcun shehui de huimie (The destruction of rural society) (Hong Kong: Mirror Books, 2010), 211.
21 Qu Guiping, Huabei xiangcun minzhong: shiye zhong de shehui fenceng jiqi biandong, 171.
22 Wu Mi, Mu Mi riji xubian (Selected diary entries of Wu Mi) (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2006), 66.
23 Tang Qixiang, Tan Qixiang riji (Diary of Tan Qixiang), ed. Ge Jiangxiong (Shanghai: Wenhui chubanshe, 1998), 3–4.
24 Mao Zedong, “Xin jiefangqu tugai douzheng celue (Strategy of Land Reform struggle in newly liberated areas),” in Mao Zedong wenji, vol. 5 (Beijing: renmin chubanshe, 1996), 37.
25 See Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China, 2nd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999), 375–85. In southern provinces Jiangxi and Guangdong, the average rent rate was between 40 to 60 percent of the output of land, and rent in Jiangxi could be as high as 80 percent. See Chen Po-ta, A Study of Land Rent in Pre-liberation China (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1958), 36–37; Chen Han-seng, Landlord and Peasant in China: A Study of the Agrarian Crisis in South China (Westport, CT: Hyperion Press, Inc., 1973), 45; C.K. Yang, A Chinese Village in Early Communist Transition (Technology Press, MIT, 1959), 49. Fu Yiling suggests that rent in some Jiangxi villages could be as high as 70 to 80 percent. See Fu Yiling, MingQing nongcun shehui jingji/Mingqing shehui jingji bianqian lun (Rural social economy in the Ming and Qing/An account of the change of social economics in the Ming and Qing) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2007), 84. Lucien Bianco also points out that peasants-landlord enmity was not the major tension in rural China. See Lucien Bianco, Peasants Without the Party: Grassroots Movements in Twentieth-Century China (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2001).
26 Prasenjit Duara, Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900–1942 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 252.
27 For a discussion of stages of human society and its relevance to Land Reform, see “Zhonggong zhongyang tudi gaige zhong ge shehui jieji de huafen jiqi daiyu de guiding,” in Zhongyang dangan guan, ed., Jiefang zhanzheng shiqi tudi gaige wenjian xuanji (Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe, 1981), 173.
28 Hebei Sheng dang’anguan (Hebei Provincial Archives), Hebei tudi gaige dang’an shi liao xuanbian (Selected archival materials of Land Reform in Hebei) (Shijiazhuang: Hebei renmin chubanshe, 1990), 98.
29 Ibid., 122.
30 For a discussion of fanxin, fanshen, and suku, also see Fangchun Li, “Class, Power, and the Contradictions of Chinese Revolutionary Modernity: Interpreting Land Reform in Northern China, 1946–48” (PhD dissertation, University of California at Los Angles, 2008), 35, 229–37.
31 “Zhonggong zhongyang zhongnanju guanyu fangshou fadong qunzhong chedi wancheng tudi gaige jihua de zhishi,” Tudi gaige zhongyao wenxian yu jingyan huibian, 375.
32 Suzanne Pepper, Civil War in China: The Political Struggle, 1945–1949 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 310.
33 Chen Zhengren, “Ruhe fenxiang fencun shenru tudi gaige douzheng (How to deepen the struggle of Land Reform village by village and town by town),” in Tudi gaige zhongyao wenxian yu jingyan huibian, 751.
34 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1973), 197–98.
35 Zheng Linzhuang, “Douzheng dizhu shi you ganbu tiaobo qilai de ma? (Was the struggle against landlords simply instigated by cadres?),” in Guangming ribao bianjisuo, ed., Tudi gaige yu sixiang gaizao (Land Reform and thought reform) (Beijing: Guangming ribao zong guanli chu, 1951), 75–76.
36 William Hinton, Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village (Vintage, 1966), 129.
37 Helen F. Siu, Agents and Victims in South China: Accomplices in Rural Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 127.
38 James R. Townsend, Political Participation in Communist China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 74.
39 Barrington Moore Jr., Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1978), 84.
40 Isabel and David Crook, Ten Mile Inn: Mass Movement in a Chinese Village (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979), 133–34.
41 See Philip Huang, “Rural Class Struggle in the Chinese Revolution: Representational and Objective Realities from the Land Reform to the Cultural Revolution,” Modern China, vol. 21, no. 1 (January 1995): 113.
42 Sulamith Heins Potter and Jack M. Potter, China’s Peasants: The Anthropology of a Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 40.
43 Zhao Dingyuan, “Shangcheng xian Youfan xiang shenru gupinnong zhagen suku chuanlian fadong pingunong de jige zhuyao jingyan (Several Key experiences of going deep into poor peasants and organizing speaking bitterness in Youfan Town, Shangcheng County),” Zhonggong zhongyao lishi wenxian ziliao huibian teji zhi shiwu (Compiled important historical source materials of the Chinese Communist Party) (Los Angeles: Zhongwen chuban fuwu zhongxin bian, 2000), 819.
44 For the reliance on middle peasant during the anti-Japanese war in north China, see David S.G. Goodman, Social and Political Change in Revolutionary China (Lanham, MD: Roman and Littlefield, 2000), 165–69.
45 Franz Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 32.
46 For the explanatory role of class in villages, see Yang Su, Collective Killings in Rural China during the Cultural Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 107.
47 Luo Zhaohui, Funong yu xin funong: ershi shiji qianbanqi huabei xiangcun shehui bianqian de zhujue (Rich peasant and new rich peasant: Main characters in the social change of northern Chinese villages in early 20th century) (Beijing: remin chubanshe, 2010), 88–93.
48 This Confucian vs. Communist approaches to rural reconstruction is thoroughly discussed in Guy S. Alitto in The Last Confucian: Liang Shu-ming and the Chinese Dilemma of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 215–25.
49 Zhang Yun, “Tantan huazhong de tudi gaige (August 1, 1947) (A Discussion on Land Reform in Central China gaige (August 1, 1947)),” in Zhonghua quanguo funu lianhe hui funu yundong lishi yanjiu shi ed., Zhongguo funu yundong lishi ziliao (1945·10—1949·9) (Historical materials of Chinese women’s liberation (1945·10—1949·9)) (Beijing: Zhongguo funu chubanshe, 1991), 182–83.
50 See Roy Hofheinz, Jr., The Broken Wave: The Chinese Communist Peasant Movement, 1922–1928 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 123.
51 Zhang Yiping, Diquan biandong yu shehui chonggou: Sunan tudi gaige yanjiu, 1949–1952 (The change of land ownership and reconstruction of society: A study of Land Reform in southern Jiangsu, 1949–1952) (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chuabanshe, 2009), 167.
52 Hebei Sheng dang’anguan, Hebei tudi gaige dang’an shi liao xuanbian, 122.
53 Ibid., 296.
54 Zhao Dingyuan, “Shangcheng xian youfan xiang shenru gupinnong zhagen suku chuanlian fadong pingunong de jige zhuyao jingyan,” Zhonggong zhongyao lishi wenxian ziliao huibian teji zhi shiwu, 820.
55 Hebei Sheng dang’anguan, Hebei tudi gaige dang’an shi liao xuanbian, 162.
56 Yang Hansheng, Yang Hansheng riji (Diary of Yang Hansheng) (Chengdu: Sichuan wenyi chubanshe, 1985), 488.
57 C.K. Yang, A Chinese Village in Early Communist Transition (Technology Press, MIT, 1959), 107.
58 Liu Jianxun, “Hubei sheng bannian tudi gaige zongjie ji jinhou gongzuo wenti (Summary of the Land Reform work in Hubei Province in the past half year and several problems regarding future work),” in Tudi gaige zhongyao wenxian yu jingyan huibian, 662, 664.
59 Zhao Dingyuan, “Shangcheng xian youfan xiang shenru gupinnong zhagen suku chuanlian fadong pingunong de jige zhuyao jingyan”, Zhonggong zhongyao lishi wenxian ziliao huibian teji zhi shiwu, 827.
60 Ma Te, “Tudi gaige gongzuo shi zenyang jinxing de? (How was Land Reform work conducted?),” in Guangming ribao bianjisuo, ed., Tudi gaige yu sixiang gaizao (Beijing: Guangming ribao zong guanli chu, 1951), 53.
61 Li Lifeng, “Tugai zhong de suku”, 107–08.
62 For peasants acquisition of political neologisms, see Chalmers A. Johnson, Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China 1937–1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), 5.
63 Ezra Vogel, “Land Reform in Kwangtung 1951–1953: Control and Localism,” The China Quarterly, vol. 38 (June 1969): 36.
64 Zhongnan junzheng weiyuanhui tudi gaige weiyuanhui, Tudi gaige zhongyao wenxian yu jingyan huibian, 662.
65 Li Lifeng, “Tugai zhong de suku,” 104.
66 Shangannin bianqu fulian, “Shanganning bianqu tugai yundong zhong funu gongzuo de gaikuang (August 4, 1948) (An outline of women’s work during the Land Reform of Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia border region),” in Zhonghua quanguo funu lianhe hui funu yundong lishi yanjiu shi ed., Zhongguo funu yundong lishi ziliao (1945·10—1949·9) (Beijing: Zhongguo funu chubanshe, 1991), 265.
67 Anne E. McLaren, “The Grievance Rhetoric of Chinese Women: From Lamentation to Revolution,” Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context, no. 4 (September 2002), http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue4/mclaren.html (last accessed October 20, 2013).
68 Gail Hershatter, The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China’s Collective Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 78.
69 Ibid.
70 Harlan W. Jencks, From Musket to Missiles: Politics and Professionalism in the Chinese Army, 1945–1981 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1982), 44.
71 Jiang Siyi, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun zhengzhi gongzuo shi (Beijing: Jiefangjun zhengshi xueyuan chubanshe, 1984), 365.
72 Sun Jiangang, Cheng Dongtian, “Xinshi zhengjun yundong zai xibei yezhanjun de yuanqi (The rise of new style army reorganization in northwestern army),” Handan zhiye jishu xueyuan xuebao, vol. 15, no. 3 (2002): 92.
73 Jiang Siyi, Zhongguo renmin jiefangju zhengzhi gongzuo shi, 412.
74 Huang Yao et al., Luo Ronghuan zhuan (Biography of Luo Ronghuan) (Beijing: dangdai zhongguo chubanshe, 1991), 427.
75 Chen Xiangming & Hao Lei, “Xinshi zhengjun yundong de lishi kaocha ji qishi (Historical review of the new type of ideological education movement in the army and its enlightenments),” Junshi lishi, no. 6 (2008): 47. Also see Jiang Siyi, Zhongguo renmin jiefangju zhengzhi gongzuo shi, 409.
76 Sun Shuyun, The Long March: The True Story of Communist China’s Founding Myth (Doubleday, 2007).
77 Yang Su, Collective Killings in Rural China during the Cultural Revolution, 115.
78 Susanne Pepper, Civil War in China: The Political Struggle, 1945–1949, 294–95.
79 Wang Youming, Jiefanqu tudi gaige yanjiu, 1941–1948, 109–12. Official Party and Army histories emphasize the correlation between land redistribution and peasants’ enthusiasm, and in recent years, attention has been paid to the PLA’s strategic changes and improvements in weaponry to explain its rapid victory against the Nationalist army. See Xiaobing Li, A History of the Modern Chinese Army (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky), 75. Official history in China usually does not acknowledge peasants’ passive resistance and CCP’s compulsory enlistment.
80 Jin Chongji, Zhuanzhe niandai: Zhongguo de 1947 nian, 343.
81 Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun di yi yezhanjun zhanshi (The battling history of the First Field Army of the PLA) (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe, 1995), 108–09. Cited in Jin Chongji, Zhuanzhe niandai: Zhongguo de 1947 nian, 356.
82 Odd Arne Westad, Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946–1950 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 201.
83 Sun Jiangang, Cheng Dongtian, “Xinshi zhengjun yundong zai xibei yezhanjun de yuanqi,” 91.
84 Westad, Decisive Encounters, 201.
85 Yu Qiuli, Yu Qiuli huiyilu (Memoir of Yu Qiuli) (Beijing: Jiefangjun chubanshe, 1996), 338.
86 Ibid., 342.
87 Ibid., 344.
88 Ibid., 346.
89 Guo Zhihua, “Xinshi zhengjun yundong zai liandui,” Danshi wenhui (Materials from CPC history), no. 10 (2002): 45.
90 Yu Qiuli, Yu Qiuli Huiyilu, 348.
91 Guo Zhihua, “Xinshi zhengjun yundong zai liandui,” 45.
92 Yu Qiuli, Yu Qiuli Huiyilu, 348.
93 Ibid., 349.
94 Jiang Siyi, Zhongguo renmin jiefangju zhengzhi gongzuo shi, 410.
95 Yu Qiuli, Yu Qiuli huiyilu, 354.
96 Peng Dehuai, Peng Dehuai zishu (Self-portrait of Peng Dehuai) (Beijing: Jiefangjun wenyi chubanshe, 2002), 259–60.
97 Yu Qiuli, 357.
98 Ibid., 358.
99 Jin Chongji, Zhuanzhe niandai: Zhongguo de 1947 nian, 356.
100 Huang Kecheng, Huang Kecheng zishu (Self-portrait of Huang Kecheng) (Beijing: renmin chunbanshe, 2004), 241.
101 Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun junshi kexueyuan, Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun dashi ji (A chronicle of PLA) (Beijing: Junshi kexue chubanshe), 269.
102 For political work in Nationalist army, see John Fitzgerald, Awakening China: Politics, Culture, and Class in the Nationalist Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 300–01.
103 Huang Yao, Luo Ronghuan (Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 1996), 194–99.
104 Dirlik, “Modernity as History: Post-Revolutionary China, Globalization and the Question of Modernity”, 28–29. See also Dirlik, “Modernism and Antimodernism in Mao Zedong’s Marxism”, in Arif Dirlik, et al., eds., Critical Perspectives on Mao Zedong’s Thought, 67.
105 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 168.
106 For this mainly persuasive approach, also see Huaiyin Li, Village China Under Socialism sand Reform, 4.
107 Li Xiannian, “fadong qunzhong zhong de jige wenti (Several questions in the mobilization of the masses),” Tudi gaige zhongyao wenxian yu jingyan huibian, 639.
108 For an anthropological analysis of expression of anger and sorrow in Chinese culture, see Sulamith Heins Potter and Jack M. Potter, China’s Peasants: The Anthropology of a Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 186–87.