Exiled Pilgrims: Memoirs of Pre-Cultural Revolution Zhiqing

Description

Exiled Pilgrims contains thirty-two personal accounts by people who, as teenagers, went to rural China in 1964 and 1965. Barred from high school or college by political discrimination, the authors left the cities for the countryside in hopes of redeeming their “original sin” while making a difference in rural China with their hard work, only to find out that their idealism was futile in a mundane world and absurd time. Thus their pilgrimage to an illusory utopia turned into a painful search for truth and a tough struggle to liberate themselves against enormous odds.The book is the first and only collection of stories by members of a once marginalized and heretofore largely unheard-of group in contemporary China."The stories of these young 'exiled pilgrims' bring the reader uplifting examples of the resilience of the human spirit. Their stories are heart-breaking, but the voice is never cynical, and hope is a constant. Exiled Pilgrims is a treasure."Carole Head, High Point University