Customer Reviews

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

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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 reading the book, I felt as though an epilogue would be useful to explain what happened to Lijia personally after she left the factory. I also wished she provided her commentary on China's progress today, which certainly is influenced by the policies of the 80's. Or perhaps the author will produce a sequel book to deal with the subject. I certainly would want to read it.

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 lasted, although she gives no details and indeed thanks her former husband cordially for help with this book.

The last mention of socialism is a brief aside to the effect that the communist cage has become less cramped and oppressive. This seems to be true particularly in sexual respects, that particular culture in the author's early years making the kind of presbyterian Catholicism I was brought up in seem like a public holiday in Gomorrah. I'm not really sure, and I don't greatly care, how well the book's title describes what the book turns out to be about. It all hangs together exceptionally well, it has an air of honesty and authenticity about it, and one question that Lijia did resolve for me was how she can get away with such candour - it reads as if she is no longer a citizen of the People's Republic, although she lives in Beijing these days. When I bade her farewell at Sancha on 15 June I had not really thought of reading her book, but somehow the idea grew on me, and I think I made the right life choice at least to that extent.

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.

This is an excellent book from two different perspectives. First, it provides a fascinating look into the life of an ambitious person born into a society that doesn't always reward personal ambition. Second, for those of you interested in Chinese culture, it provides great insight. I practiced international law for many years, and this book would have been very helpful to me at that time. Ms. Zhang's openess and honesty give constant glimpses into the value system and thought patterns of Chinese people in general, and a young Chinese woman in particular.

I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting a look inside of China, or wanting an entertaining book.

I've bought 2 copies of this excellent book so I'd like to recommend it to Amazonians in the US as well as the UK.
Lijia Zhang is now an internationally acclaimed journalist and writer, but began her career as a factory worker in provincial China. She has written a very funny, touching and insightful account of her youth in the 1980s. Her hopes of higher education were first dashed by her mother's decision to make her leave school to work in a factory, and then gradually realised as she took courses through the "TV University", studying first engineering and then, thankfully for us, English. The book recounts both China's transformation from the last traces of the Cultural Revolution to a market economy, and the author's own transformation from a subservient daughter and model worker to a radical protestor and budding writer. It tells us a lot about China's politics and economics in that period, but it is also very personal, food and sex being central elements in the story.

Several reviewers have observed that the one thing that is missing from the book is what happens to the author after 1989. Perhaps volume 2 will reveal it but in the meantime Lijia's website has more information about her as well as about this book.

I have met Lijia Zhang and seen her on TV. I was charmed by this account and recommend it very strongly.

This is a great read. Anyone interested in China and women in modern China should read this for its exceptional portrayal of the rapidly changing and evolving place of women in China.
Throughout the narrative of Lijia's life, from early childhood on, the portrait she draws of herself and those around her is intense and personal, while she describes her life, those she loves, and survival and success despite the large and numerous obstacles in her way. Lijia is a determined young woman, her personality shines through the pages of the book as she takes us on her journey as an independent thinker in a conformist society. My only complaint is that I want more, more about her beloved grandmother whose grace and strength shine, the grit and determination of her mother to survive and care for her family, Lijia herself, how did she get to where she is today.
Lijia is open and honest about herself, her country, her family, and her friends, even about the mistakes and twists and turns of her life. Definitely not a puff piece, she narrates her life as she lived it and perceived it. This is an honest and remarkable book.
Please, Lijia, write more!!!

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!

I loved Zhang's use of Chinese words to accompany her descriptions and phrases. I found the literal (and often peculiar) translations of conversations from Chinese to English endearing and amusing. Her descriptions give the reader such rich visuals of her family members, coworkers, friends, and lovers. I was impressed with her English and that she used American colloquialisms in appropriate contexts. You can really feel Zhang's emotions as she transitions from being a 'typical obediant Chinese girl' to a rebellious individualistic member of China's society.

Whether you enjoy memoirs, or stories of China (or both in my case!); this book provides a perfect mix of Chinese history and an author's personal growth.

ps: I finished this book in 2 days! I couldn't put it down! :)

Socialism was not quite as great as the Party authorities used to say it was, according to Lijia Zhang in her autobiographical book. The book starts with the story of how Lijia, much against her will, inherited from her mother a rather uninspiring job at the Liming Machinery Factory, meaning that she had to leave school at the age of 16 and give up her dreams of going to university and becoming a writer.

As was the case with many other decisions made in China in the early 1980s, the person most affected by the decision -- Lijia -- did not get consulted when her mother decided that Lijia would take over the factory job, in order to maximise the family's income. The book describes how Lijia coped with an essentially boring job within an authoritarian workplace, and how attempts at expressing individuality by wearing slightly different clothing were met with stern disapproval.

Lijia eventually taught herself English and managed to obtain an education through courses run by Teach Yourself University. She describes how she worked her way through a series of secret relationships, and how she eventually encountered trouble with the police after organising a march in support of the Tiananmen Square protesters. The book is written in an engaging style, and it provides a useful insight into the recent past of many who live in China.

As maybe the case with many potential readers, I had quite a few preconceived ideas about China and the Chinese. Lijia Zhang's book proved a healthy antidote.

This charming and entertaining (near-)autobiography tells the story of individualist Lijia. In the midst of a restrictive political and economic system, she is not afraid of dreaming. And she does not let her surroundings deter her from chasing (and catching!) those dreams.

Lijian writes openly about her longing for freedom, openness, wealth and sexual expression. The book made China and the Chinese much more real and approachable to me. If you're curious about the upcoming world power that China is, Lijia's book is not to be missed. And it's a good read to boot.