Back to the City: The Return of Shanghai's Educated Youth

In: The China quarterly, Volume 84, p. 755-770

Abstract

Bands of young men took to the streets of Shanghai in late 1978, shouting slogans, vandalizing stores, putting up wall posters, imprisoning municipal officials in their offices and disrupting rail traffic. To many Shanghainese, it was déjà vu, a replay of Red Guard activities during the Cultural Revolution (CR), and small wonder, as the participants were those same youths who had rampaged through the city and then foresworn the urban security of Shanghai to go up to the mountains and down to the countryside to build socialism. Now, a decade later, disillusioned, alienated, in dire economic straits, unmarried and abandoned, they had ridden a "back to the city wind" and were determined to stay.