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As promised, here is a short thread on this book: "Liangjiahe village: a story of Chinese president Xi Jinping", Shaanxi People's Publishing House, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 2018.
Basically it is a book about Xi Jinping's seven years spent in Liangjiahe village, Shaanxi province which turned out to be formative in his character, outlook on the world and thinking. There are many parts in it from this earlier Chinese book that is much longer:
Let's start with something fun and easy, not to rattle China-watcher and anti-China people souls too much, at least in the beginning, from this book I learned that Xi used to wrestle as a youth and it's amazing:
One of the most important takeaways of the book is that Xi's conviction to serving the people originated in Liangjiahe. It is important to debunk the western msm narrative about the "origin myth of Xi". Manual labor is so alien to these journos, they think it is a myth.
During the GPCR his father was banished, his family separated, one of his older sisters was beaten to death by Red Guards, the other banished to Inner Mongolia, he was told his father was part of a "Dark Cabal" and that he, a 15 yr old kid, should die a 100 deaths. Revolution!
In a climate like this, he remembered in an interview decades later, that being sent to Liangjiahe was a kind of an escape, since he probably would have met his end at the hands of the Red Guards.
Arriving in Yan'an, they knew it was hallowed ground of the Chinese revolution and they were surprised how austere and simple it is after all the stories and reminiscences they were used to.
Conditions at Liangjiahe at first were so poor, villagers were astounded by these urban kids washing their teeth, they didn't know what the kids were doing. Also, shout out to Timothy Grose, that clown who thinks teaching people to wash their teeth is colonialization lmao.
A note on the poverty. Remember, this is Foreign Languages Press, Beijing speaking and the CPC, not some Radio Free Asia clown. This is something no ultra will ever admit in their fetishization of the GPCR as a spotless utopia:
First types of manual labor Xi did in the village. Added to this was carrying firewood, gravel and working on the fields planting and harvesting.
Other than working through the day, he kept reading through the night. These are just some very few titles of those he read. He read Chinese, Russian, French and German classics which debunks the myth that no foreign works were available during the GPCR. He loved reading Faust.
Zhou Enlai's visit to the area signified a change and a turn to better things. Zhou's attitude here again shows how dedicated a socialist he was. The stats here again debunk the ultra myth of the GPCR period as some flawless utopia wrecked by capitalists.
One of the examples here clearly shows why these days Xi is so dedicated to the "toilet revolution". Westerners always make cynical jokes about that, but it just shows their disgusting privilege that never saw the kind of poverty Xi lived in from 15 to 22 yrs of age.
Xi was one of the driving forces behind the building of methane tanks and was part of the team that built the first one in Shaanxi, greatly alleviating the hardships of the peasantry who no longer needed to walk kms for firewood. Evil Xi making the peasantry lazy capitalists (s.)
Recounting those years, he said he initially didn't have any plans on becoming a political figure, he just wanted to help people and self-cultivate, but then seeing the poverty in rural areas changed that into a political dedication the likes of which he couldn't imagine before.
This is the kind of poverty we are talking about during the GPCR. Again, this is official CPC material, not some China-watcher nonsense. This kind of poverty shouldn't be denied, but admitted while also admitting the CPC's grand alleviation of it through various programs.
These kinds of experiences hardened Xi's resolve as a dedicated communist to lead China on a socialist path towards communism. I find it important to stress this with both liberals, left-clowns and actual fascist saying that China is fascist. No, it is not. Pipe down and stfu.
Xi later started re-organizing the village, once he became party representative there as member of the youth league (admitted on the fourth try only because of his father). He realized what ultras never do: practical help for the people is much more important than sloganeering.
Practical help like building a mechanical millhouse so peasants don't have gruel and toil all day long. Again, Xi turning hard working peasants into lazy capitalists is what I would say if I were a privileged ultra in my parents' basement having suffered no poverty ever.
Through his reorganization efforts he managed to turn the work point system into a kind of credit system (AHA!) for people who had close to zero actual money. But again, money = capitalism so bad Xi! (s.)
Later he took part in the socialist education movement and was sent to different parts of Shaanxi to spearhead organizing study groups and founding schools. All this before he was 22.
He later tried to go to university, but that great system that punished your for your elders' crimes or mistakes initially wouldn't allow him to. Even despite Mao Zedong having a good opinion of Xi Zhongxun, Xi's father. Not that ultras ever cared about what Mao thought.
This can also be seen by how ultras only care about a tiny, narrow slit of what Mao Zedong Thought (毛泽东思想) actually is. Which is clown nonsense, but who else is surprised ultras are clowns again? Also, still not calling them "maoists", since it would be an insult to Mao.
Xi always took Liangjiahe as the most formative time in his life. Seeing abject poverty, destitution behind the sloganeering of the Gang of Four turned him away from that attitude, because you can have the most red flags, it's still nothing, if the people are starving under them.
This is an amazingly informative, politically engaging, enlightening book on the period and Xi's life during those years. Not only that, it is highly informative on the rural conditions and why the poverty alleviation campaign is so important whatever privileged ultras might say.
Also, these experiences are just some which undercut the bullshit narrative of the West calling Xi a privileged princeling and running hit pieces on his daughter as "the new princess of China". Send western journos to hell (at least most of them): https://twitter.com/TheTrueTankMan/status/1121892907429040132
So if you read the thread, go watch president Xi's new year's address and compare the two. You will be amazed. https://twitter.com/PDChina/status/1344600079559131136?s=20
