Ever wonder what it would be like to live in a model communist Chinese village?

January 14, 2002 7:07 PM

Ever wonder what it would be like to live in a model communist Chinese village? Apartments come in only two sizes. Residents are bound by strict rules. The approval of a Communist Party committee is required for all marriages. A mass wedding is held once a year on New Year's Day. After childbirth women are sterilised. Wrongdoers are paraded through the village with their heads shaved. The village has acquired cult status among those who still pine for the certainties of the Mao era
posted by Rastafari (8 comments total)

You forgot to mention that the residents were furious with having to leave, willing to put up a legal battle (not always smart in China), and were forcefully evicted and some beaten.
posted by skyline at 7:15 PM on January 14, 2002

I saw this awesome movie called 'Farewell,my concubine' way back fresh out of college. I could never be very objective about the Maoist way of living afterwards. The sooner that the ghost of Mao goes away, the better.

Nonetheless its a sad story. Such utter contempt for its people are commonplace in China. I hope some day the people in China will wake up and throw away the regime there .....
posted by justlooking at 7:22 PM on January 14, 2002

I find it mockingly ironic that the last bastion of Mao's ideal village model is being bulldozed to build something that goes against everything he stood for. I also find it interesting the way that many Asian countries seem to embrace and refine capitalism in a way that would make many American businessmen ashamed. China has become a capitalist society in all but name; its admission into the WTO should pretty much spell the death knell for any Communist ideals.

I hope some day the people in China will wake up and throw away the regime there .....

As long as the marketplace keeps on expanding, and the jobs and goods keep on coming, I don't think many Chinese will care much about the governmental situation. Most Chinese tend to be rather apolitical; if the government doesn't trouble them, they don't bother with the government.

And Kaushik, you might like the film To Live. It's quite anti-Maoist, but also a beautiful film about spirit in the face of adversity.
posted by calistasm at 8:03 PM on January 14, 2002

If there were no contradictions in the Party and no ideological struggles to resolve them, the Party's life would come to an end.
   --Mao Tse-Tung
posted by varmint at 8:20 PM on January 14, 2002

To paraphrase someone I've forgotten: "The most dangerous thing in the world is a young, unemployed, unmarried man. China has twenty million of them."
posted by aramaic at 8:29 PM on January 14, 2002

Ever wonder what it would be like to live in a model communist Chinese village?

No.
posted by HTuttle at 10:20 PM on January 14, 2002

Ever wonder what it would be like to live by your ideals, only to be beaten down by the system that taught you those ideals in the first place, in order to establish bastions of the very ideology you were taught to despise?

My own childhood home was knocked down to make way for a parking lot. That action alone still bristles my back.

I'm sorry. Perhaps it's 'unpatriotic' to say this, but I have to say that this makes me a little bit angry. Kind of like the missionaries who go into indigenous areas to 'civilise' the 'savages'. If they're content, and they're not hurting anyone, leave them the hell alone, China. They're only doing what you taught them to do.
posted by tpoh.org at 7:19 AM on January 15, 2002

Setting the actualy article to one side for the moment and at the risk of being branded a Communist myself (hell, it wouldn't be the first time), I greatly doubt Karl Marx had that kind of life in mind. Is it really a model Communist village? I don't think so.

Other than that, I'm with tpoh.org on this one. It's well out of order.
posted by malross at 4:09 PM on January 15, 2002