Chapter 11 Chapter Eleven

The embankment flood flooded down from the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. From the Yunnan border to almost all water and land routes in the interior, trains, cars, and ships full of refugee-like educated youths stop day and night.Some educated youths are empty-handed, hanging around, "naked and come and go without any worries"; some are in pairs, with children and daughters;The world was originally a big stage, where 100,000 educated youth actors hastily staged a wonderful life drama full of great joy and great sorrow. From a macro point of view, the return of the educated youth to the city is an inevitable repetition of the movement to go to the countryside ten years ago, where they came from and where they are going.Therefore, the educated youths went to the mountains and the countryside under the red flag, and after burying an ambitious dream of pioneering in the frontier, they embarked on the journey back to the city without armor and armor.

But we cannot simply judge that the rout itself is equal to failure.Because for intellectual youth, when their heroic core is ruthlessly castrated by history, they have to find and repair themselves on the path full of thorns and purgatory fire.The Great Migration of Educated Youth that took place in China in the second half of this century was a comprehensive search for a whole generation of all cultural forms, including living conditions, of themselves and their own nation.They sow youth, reap suffering and responsibility, lose slogans and banners, but gain heavy thoughts and confidence. In just two or three months after February 1979, the return rate of educated youth from farms in Yunnan was as high as 90 percent.By the following year, there were only more than 3,200 people left, less than 3% of the original total.

The wave of educated youth returning to the city, which originated from the state-owned farms in Yunnan, quickly hit major reclamation areas across the country.The central government and various provinces and cities lenient their policies on educated youth, so the movement of educated youth across the country to return to cities reached its climax at the turn of spring and summer of that year.At this point, the Going to the Mountains and Going to the Countryside Movement, which lasted ten years and created a whole generation of educated youths, finally came to an end.