Out of the Crucible

Out of the Crucible offers an informative and inviting study of the novels and short stories of the lives of the zhiqing, the Chinese urban youth who were sent to rural areas during the "rustication" movement in the second phase of the Cultural Revolution. Author Zuoya Cao, a former zhiqing herself, covers the works, authors, themes, characters, and plots of zhiqing literary writing from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. She teases out the significant themes of zhiqing literature: heroism and idealism, suffering and internal transformation, moral dilemmas and the loss of innocence, love and cultural difference, sexual and spiritual oppression, zhiqing/peasant relations, the relationship between man and nature, and the conflict between the desire to leave the countryside and the attachment to it. Through a perceptive analysis of the treatment of these themes, drawing on her extensive knowledge of Chinese literary and social history in addition to her own experiences, Cao reveals the emotional aspects of the rustication movement and the humanistic significance of the zhiqing experience and enriches our understanding of modern Chinese literature and history.