The story behind The Story

My parents were the send-down urban youth or zhiqinq. They were the generation born in the dawn of the People’s Republic of China, participated in the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and when it turned violent they followed Mao Zedong’s call to "go into the mountains and remote rural areas" to build a new China. My parents volunteered to go to Xinjiang. Unfortunately, like most zhiqinq, they never settled in their host region. Having grown-up in Shanghai, where the resources were richer and the weather milder, they struggled to root in Xinjiang, where the winter temperature dips to minus 40 degrees Celsius and lamb and cabbage were often the only staple. My parents dreamed of returning to Shanghai. In the 1980s, zhiqinq across the country staged nationwide demonstrations, demanding returning to their hometowns; most of them were from Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin. Directly after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, a national policy was published in response to their request. The irony was that instead of allowing the zhiqinq to return home, the policy sanctioned one of their children aged 16 and above to return. I was one of the millions zhiqing children, who arrived in Shanghai in the early 1990s amid the devastation of the zhiqing and the frustration of their relatives who automatically became the guardian of zhiqing children under the national policy. The bitter mood is well captured in the semi-documentary TV drama The Karma (Nie Zhai 1994), directed by Huang Shuqin.

I arrived in Shanghai in the year of 1990 just after I turned 16. My parents utilised all their guanxi had me enrolled as an apprentice at Shanghai Watch Factory, which at the time was regarded one of the most prestigious state-owned enterprises with excellent social welfare. At Shanghai Watch Factory, I was impressed with the working condition: all workshops had central air-condition, which was rare in the early 1990s; there were weekly supplements for every staff – from large cartons of top quality apples, silk jackets to endless theatre tickets of various performances – all for free. It was around 1993, we began to hear announcements calling for voluntary redundancy in weekly staff meetings. Soon, list of names for compulsory redundancy were put up in the canteen area, where weekly supplements were distributed. Everything happened so swiftly, few comprehended the scale of the change. This is the nationwide State-Owned Enterprise (SOE) reform, launched by Deng Xiaoping in 1992, to manually transform China's traditional industries to the Creative Industries.

As a youngster, I and other youth, took full advantage of the transition. For the first time in our life, career path did not have to be sanctioned by party leaders but were market driven. In response to widespread skill shortage and a growing demand of human resource, numerous training programmes and even university degree courses were open to the public. I enrolled in English class, Japanese class, computer class, as well as took the national university entry exam and passed and being accepted at East Normal University for an undergraduate degree in English. Whilst studying, I worked as a waitress in Shanghai’s first 5-star Hotel, a typist at Shanghai’s first mobile communication company operated by the People’s Liberation Army, a receptionist in an American computer company, and even fulfilled my dream of becoming a professional yueju performer, after passed interviews and being accepted as a xiaosheng (male) role at Shanghai Luwan All-female Yueju Troupe. I soaked in knowledge, hopped between jobs, excited with new opportunities that were suddenly available to us. For the young generation, it was a great new era when everything seemed possible.

At the same time, concerns and worries loomed around the older workers who were made compulsory redundant at the age of 45 and above. My parents’ generation once again fell into this group. This generation grew up under Mao Zedong’s socialist doctrine had lived and worked all their life in the SOE system. They could not comprehend the ideological change, nor were prepared for the socio-economic transition. They were bitter and confused. I remember one day my mother came home and told me that she had been made redundant: "I devoted all my life to the party, I was obedient and followed everything the government and the party asked of me. Now they ditch me like a piece of used rag; I am only 45! What am I going to do?" I remember my response at the time was: "45 is old enough (to retire)! There is plenty you can do, enrol yourself in Old People’s University, sing yueju, enjoy yourself!" She did not reply. Only years later, when I turned 45, I realised how hurtful my words to my mum were at the time. We never discussed her redundancy after that brief exchange. We kind of understand each other’s feeling – the joy and excitement of the youth and the pain and confusion of the older generation; yet, we could not share our experience nor truly understand each other. It is as if there is an invincible wall between us, the two generations separated by Deng Xiaoping’s reform.

Today, the Shanghai M50 Contemporary Arts Cluster, a former textile factory turned China’s first creative park stands proudly as the symbol of China’s successful transition from ‘made in China’ to ‘created in China’. There is little trace of the painful process, and those born in the new millennium have no memory of this part of the history as it is now the ‘dark heritage’ and a taboo topic to discuss in mainland China. Few is able to articulate when and how the Chinese Creative Industries began (Ma 2022).

I dedicate Song of the Female Textile Workers to the generation which sacrificed themselves in China’s post-industrial transformation and to the generation which embraced China’s brave new world with passion and ambition.

Further reading on the formation and development of China Creative Industries please see Ma, Haili. 2024. Understanding Cultural and Creative Industries through Chinese Theatre. Palgrave.