After meaning (and meaning well) to blog about something towards the end of September, I faced some consistent failures in my self confidence to do so. To make up for it, I will attempt to draw one anecdote of my non-academic life to delve into some deeper issues that I must explore to greater depth during the course of my Revolutionary Masterpiece.
At some point in the past two weeks, I have felt like a pre-1949 Chinese peasant. After working a total of 81.25 hours in the timespan of one month, I was looking forward to that envelope in my mailbox that had that cheque made out to my name more than anything. However, when payday rolled around, what I found in my mailbox disappointed me greatly--the amount was significantly lower than what I was owed.
Confused and panicky, as my rent was due at the end of the month, I dodged several symbols of capitalist affluence (a BMW, an entire sandwich that had fallen on the ground and a girl with a Longchamp bag texting away on her iPhone 4) as I ran down the street in my holed jeans and sneakers that have suffered from overuse, and finally arrived at the employment office. I told a representative of my concerns as politely as I could, huffing and puffing like an old horse who has worked in the fields her whole life and has never had a rest, and was hit rather harshly by the bureaucratic elements of the system. Apparently, as a lowly worker, I was not allowed to discuss the issue until I had filled out a long and incomprehensible form.
If we pause my story here and introduce Zhang Yumin (from The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River 太阳照在桑干河上by Ding Ling) to my university campus, I would have expected to be pulled aside into a dark basement of a colonial building, and inducted into a group of bewildered employees and told that we have been being exploited, and now needed to revolt against the system and take back what belongs to to us.
I would have been very overwhelmed with emotion that someone would take the time to care about whether or not I am being exploited. It is indeed a great signal towards self-affirmation.
Of course, I would not dare compare my minor plight with the poor conditions of peasants in China pre-land reforms. But I just wanted to bring up the point that appropriations of land reform methodology is possible and probably (as brought up in my Revolutionary Masterpiece), in a variety of different situations, including in an American liberal arts college in 2010.
Maybe the resonance of Communist ideology will catch up to us all, one day.
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Note: my "Revolutionary Masterpiece" will henceforth refer to that great big chunk of text I'm in the process of writing. It is known more officially as my Honors Thesis for the Department of History at my higher education institution, but I think "Revolutionary Masterpiece" has a better spin to it.
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