Youth forced to work in the countryside during China's Cultural Revolution
The sent-down, rusticated, or "educated" youth (Chinese: 下乡青年), also known as the zhiqing, were the young people who—beginning in the 1950s until the end of the Cultural Revolution, willingly or under coercion—left the urban districts of the People's Republic of China to live and work in rural areas as part of the "Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement".[1][2]
The vast majority of young people who went to the rural communities had received primary to secondary school education, and only a small minority had matriculated to the post-secondary or university level.[3]
- ^ Cao, Zuoya (2003), Out of the crucible: literary works about the rusticated youth, Lexington Books, p. 1, ISBN 978-0-7391-0506-1 "The Zhiqing and the Rustication Movement "Zhiqing" is the abbreviation for zhishi qingnian, which is usually translated as "educated youth". (Zhishi means "knowledge" while qingnian means "youth".) The term zhishi qingnian appeared during "
- ^ China's Sent-Down Generation 2013 216 "zhiqing: Contraction of zhishi qingnian, ..."
- ^ The A to Z of the Chinese Cultural Revolution -Guo Jian, Yongyi Song, Yuan Zhou - 2009 p74 "EDUCATED YOUTHS (zhishi qingnian or zhiqing). Although college graduates were also included in its original definition, this term, as commonly understood today, refers mainly to urban and suburban middle-school and high-school graduates during the Cultural Revolution who went to the... to be reeducated by the farmers there"
