Printed Cover of Ding Ling's 1941 fiction "When I was in Xia Village"
"When I was in Xia Village" (Simplified Chinese: 我在霞村的时候; Pinyin: wǒ zài xiá cūn de shí hòu) is a short story written in 1941 by Ding Ling, a Chinese writer. The story was originally published in June 1941 in China's Culture (中国文化, zhōng guó wén huà), a Yan'an journal, which tells the story of a young woman named Zhen Zhen, who was abducted and forced into sexual servitude by the invading Japanese.[1] She later worked as a spy for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a Japanese army prostitute to collect wartime information.[1] Zhen Zhen was treated differently with honor, pity, and disdain by her fellow villagers, as well as by Party members upon her return to Xia village.[1]
Written during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the story is generally read as both a national defense narrative and a revelation of the dark side of communist revolutionary experience.[2][3] Ding Ling subtly criticized the societal pressures placed on women in a 1940s revolutionary context.[4] Furthermore, the story speaks to the inconsistencies between the Party's official rhetoric of women's liberation and its exploitation of women's sexuality in the name of revolution.[5]
During the anti-rightist campaign in the late 1950s, the story was attacked for discrediting the Party and "glorifying" prostitution.[6] It was further criticized as a blatant example of Ding Ling's own ideological problems and sexual immorality, and she was finally expelled from the Party before being "rehabilitated" in 1978.[6][7]
^ abcEdwards, Louise. "Women Sex-Spies: Chastity, National Dignity, Legitimate Government and Ding Ling's 'When I Was in Xia Village.'" The China Quarterly, vol. 212, 2012, pp. 1062
^Mostow, Joshua S, ed. "Feminism and Revolution: The Work and Life of Ding Ling" in The Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. pp. 398
^Ding, Ling, Tani E Barlow, and Gary J Bjorge. "When I was in Xia Village," in I Myself Am a Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989. pp. 34.
^Johnson, Kay Ann. 1985. "The Yan'an Experience and the Final Civil War, 1936-49" in Women, the Family, and Peasant Revolution in China (version Pbk. ed.), pp. 73.
^Wang, Xiaojue. 2013. "Over Her Dead Body: Ding Ling's Politicization after the Socialist Revolution" in Modernity with a Cold War Face : Reimagining the Nation in Chinese Literature Across the 1949 Divide. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center. pp. 135, 139.
^ abGoldman, Merle, Social Science Research Council (U.S.), and Harvard University. "The Changing Relationship between Literature and Life: Aspects of the Writer's Role in Ding Ling" in Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. pp. 299-300.
^Feuerwerker, Yi-tsi, and Ting Ling. 1976. "Ting Ling's "When I Was in Sha Chuan (Cloud Village)"." Signs 2 (1): 255–79. pp. 278.
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