Background Reading and Classroom Material

Asia by Era Resources – China: 1950, Land Reform, Socialized Agriculture, The Great Leap Forward [AFE]

Articles, Books, and Films

These resources explore life in China before, during and after the 1949 revolution.

Asia by Era Resources – China: 1950, “Hundred Flowers” Period [AFE]
The “Hundred Flowers” campaign preceded the Great Leap Forward as part of the political debates taking place within the CCP regarding policies going forward.

Asia by Era Resources – China: 1950, Autobiographies, Novels, and Films about Life in China during and after the 1949 Revolution [AFE]
See in particular resources on Yuan-tsung Chen’s The Dragon’s Village: An Autobiographical Novel of Revolutionary China and the two resources from Education About Asia on To Live by Yu Hua

The Dragon’s Village
By Yuan-tsung Chen
Penguin/Random House, 1980
Written through the eyes of a 17 year old, urban girl from Shanghai, this book covers the period of “land reform” in the villages in the early 1950s, just before the Great Leap Forward.

Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962
By Frank Dikotter
Bloomsbury, 2010

To Live [Bing]
Film directed by Zhang Yimou based on the novel by Yu Hua, currently available online with English subtitles.

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