Writtenology 5: Fanshen
Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village is a 1966 book by academic William Hinton, documenting the experience of one particularly poor Chinese village of early efforts at land reform. It is almost opaquely dense, and yet very illuminating.
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Comments (19)
I found a French version of that book, so I learned French to be able to read it. This sounds like a joke, and in some ways it is, but also not really.
More Maoist prose please.
So glad this episode made me pick up the book. 3/4ths through and it is laughable how many of the issues in motivating people to participate politically are just so current.
Oh fuck, I would have loved to meet up with the commie rv road trip. God, I love the midwest
Amazing episode, thank you for this. Fascinating part of communist history that is so important to know about.
great stuff, can't wait for the episode on Robert Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson
The guy at 47:46 possibly being exploited by his girlfriend just makes me think of Bill Withers. ‘If you only knew, you’d wish were in my shoes, so just keep on using me until you use me up’
everyone in this book is the meme of the guy crying that he wants to mine coal and the cadre with the AK yelling at him that they're gonna have a meeting also I really ID with this whole thing where you're at work trying to self-organize in a scrum refinement meeting or something and a really weird prioritization problem occurs and you're just dying for an actual authority to come down an impose a reasonable pick
Mate, in this case the guy will be starving if the meetings take too much of daytime. This is the difference between working their field in poor village and some scrum bullcrap jobs. It is not paid by the hour.
This one was really good. I'm really enjoying this series so far, thank you so much for reading this Alice.
This was so interesting! I turned it on expecting to be entertained and then I learned something and had my horizon expanded. Thanks!
Really enjoyed this one. Have you seen silage choppers and snake spirits by foreign language press? Really fascinating account of the life of Bill Hinton and his wife Joan, who had been a nuclear physicist working in the atomic bomb during the war. Started reading the accounts by Edgar Snow too. Great writer
I love and really enjoy thoughtful episodes of TF where I get to not only learn some interesting stuff and expand my own perspective, but also hear some smart people talk about this stuff! Thanks a bunch Riley and Alice for doing this! 🧡🧡
Okay, I bought this book too (you guys are bad for my wallet, but the reading list so far has been excellent), got intimidated by the length, and haven't started. After this, though, my interest is thoroughly renewed.
Oh fucking finally
Class war correspondent is my new favorite phrase
I read an obituary of Hinton written by an official in Lucheng that talked a little about when he returned to the US and got all his notes confiscated by the Eastland committee. It contained a sentence which made me laugh so hard, "when Hinton finally appeared before the Eastland committee he was not afraid. After years of experience with struggle sessions he immediately denounced Eastland as a landlord".
Got his ass
This was really educational, great podcast.