Castration for the People

Chinese socialist peasant writer, Hao Ran (1932-2008), was well-known for his novels, Bright Sunny Sky and The Great Road of Golden Light, and remained the best-selling author during the Cultural Revolution period (1966-1976). This essay focuses on his less-studied short stories, all but one published between 1958 and 1960. Through a discussion of the politics of his revisions of his early stories, the essay argues that, far from being simplistic transmissions of a socialist ideology, these stories are often unintentionally complicated representation of gender, class, desire, and sexuality in China’s “socialist construction” era. As the Cultural Revolution represents a climax of the epic socialist battle against si, a word that encompasses a wide range of meanings from selfishness and self-interest to anything personal and private, the pruning and clipping performed by Hao Ran to his early stories are ultimately paralleled by the violence committed within a text. The last part of the essay analyzes a story written at the end of the Cultural Revolution period, which demonstrates a discursive structure of violence and embodies the obsessive quest for transparency and the spiritual violence of the Cultural Revolution itself.