This man's story - centered on the six years he spent as a young man working in the Gobi desert of Inner Mongolia (China) - serves as a full condemnation of Mao's Cultural Revolution. Not that I needed any evidence to condemn it. But the book did provide rich, lengthy detail of its devastating effects.
Weijian was "sent down" to be educated alongside China's rural farmers. What happened in actuality was that he worked with hundreds of others to accomplish less-than nothing. Their primary responsibility in the Gobi was to farm, but as Weijian points out, the net-gain in farming produce was actually a loss. They would have been better off simply EATING the seeds that they planted each year, rather than trying to farm in the barren desert.
The book serves equally as an example of how education can change lives, both at the individual and societal levels. Weijian goes on from his experience in the Gobi to gain a scholarship to study in America, eventually earning a PhD from Berkeley and a professorship at Wharton. He does stints with the World Bank, later entering private practice as an expert on American/Chinese economics and finance. His story is truly rags to riches. Education, it turns out, really is the closest thing to a panacea.
Another theme from the book is the transformational impact of Deng Xiaoping's reforms that began in the late 1970s. Just as Weijian transformed his life, China transformed its own path and trajectory under Deng's leadership. Weijian closes this loop at the end of the book by revisiting his farm in the Gobi thirty years after he left. Although the farm itself has disappeared, the region and its people are transformed by the end of his story. A completely different world.
The book brought to life much of what I have read previously about the reigns and philosophies of Mao and Deng.
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