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To the Year 1975

Interview with the 80’s, was high on the list of China's best-selling books in 2007. All of the interviews in the book reflected on the period when China began implementing its economic and cultural reforms. Some regard the 1980’s as Chinese Renaissance, or “a time of awakening.” Lin Bai’s new book, To the Year 1975, goes further back to the 1970s, a period that may best be described as “just before dawn.”

Lin, a leading writer in China, has published many novels and essays with thought-provoking ideas from a female perspective. In her latest book, To the Year 1975, Lin portrays, in autobiographic style, the lives of young people in 1975 in Guangxi Province, her home province. The book features introspective meditations on memory, sexuality, femininity, alienation and growth.

According to Lin, the book can also be named Wandering in the Age of Revolution. The year 1975 was the last year of the infamous Cultural Revolution (1966–76). Readers may find situations rather bizarre, or otherwise unique to that age. Students learned to make fertilizer in their chemistry classes, or studied literature by memorizing Chairman Mao's "little red book." When they graduated, they were forced to go to poorer remote areas to learn how to become farmers. They worked in the fields in the daytime, and recited the quotes of Chairman Mao at night.

What one feels most strongly about after reading the book, however, is that China has indeed changed dramatically during the past 30 years. Instead of talking about cars, houses, stocks, and inflation as people do today, in 1975, people exchanged pig feeding tricks. When they bought a piglet, people would worry whether it could grow big and fat enough to sell as pork. In the book, Lin vividly describes her disappointment when she discovers that her pig is not lazy enough to grow fat quickly. Instead, it was a slim athlete which liked to jump and run hurdle races.

To the Year 1975

《致一九七五》

By Lin Bai（林白）

Jiangsu Art Publishing House (江苏文艺出版社) November 2007, 28 yuan